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re: Questions about Tyce/Hero

Posted by:
fnord 10:39 pm UTC 09/11/17
In reply to: re: Questions about Tyce/Hero - Dave_Wain 11:26 am UTC 03/25/17

I got Hero over the weekend. Only had time to listen to disc 1 last night, in the car. Traffic and road noise probably made me miss some of the subtleties, but the best music sounds good in the car no matter what.

Most of the arrangements are very different, some of them boldly so. (The major dissenter is Heaven Can Wait which is relatively faithful to the original.) Tyce certainly has the voice to carry Steinman material and while I agree with Dave's comment above that he performs them differently than Meat et al, on some of the songs he sounds a lot like Meat. I can't tell you whether this is intentional on Tyce's part, but as Meat impersonators go, he's one of the better I've heard.

I will also point out that Tyce does not just sing, he performs the songs the same way Meat does, like each one is a mini-opera of its own. Tyce's theater background is apparent in his very inflection.

That said, it's not my favorite Steinman album. It's good. I enjoyed it. I even tried to just listen all the way through but by the second or third song I was singing along. (It was a long drive.) I wanted to pay attention to the changes and the character of the new arrangements, but you know how Jim's songs are. And it was an interesting selection of songs. I think that if the album were all faithful originals, I might have liked it more initially but not as much in the long run. Right now, I'm intrigued by the new arrangements and want time to listen again more intently. I feel like this is an album that will grow on me.

If I had any advice for Tyce, it would be about the packaging more than the content. The booklet was full of glamor-shots of our singer and while he certainly looks good, the pics were all obviously from the same shoot (same hair, same make-up), he just changed shirts. Also, it seemed more like a tribute to Tyce's ego than a boon for his fans. I know you need pictures of the artist in the booklet, and I suppose building a cult of personality around the artist is how things are done these days, but I think it could have been done with a little more tact. (I know, talking about tact and moderation on a Steinman project is odd.) But I'm not likely to look at the booklet again, I'm just going to play the music.

Four out of five stars.


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Previous: re: Questions about Tyce/Hero - Dave_Wain 11:26 am UTC 03/25/17
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