THE RADIO SUN – Beautiful Strange

Prolific Australians The Radio Sun continue to lay down well-crafted, smooth Melodic Hard Rock on their fifth release Beautiful Strange. Bright shining guitar hooks, clean bright euphonious vocal harmonies, flowing  rhythmic grooves, their sound is a finely tuned throwback to all of the eighties hair bands that found their primary influence in The Sweet.‘ The first three tunes, “Hold On Tight”, “Believe In Me”, and “Should Have Listened To My Heart” could all have been clawing for rotation space on MTV during the heydays of that movement if supported by DayGlo videos featuring dancing Spandexed cuties and soulful shots of the band in action, lightly headbanging and delivering grinning solos and harmonies.

Hair Metal of that era was typically powered by either the crotch (Kiss, Mötley Crüe, Poison) or the heart (Dokken, Bon Jovi, Winger)—just add alcohol! —the Radio Sun is squarely in the latter category, and there isn’t a single song about substance abuse, though many are about being considerate of one’s significant others’ feelings. This booze-free, heart-based approach to Hard Rock might be disappointing to those hoping to capture some of the swagger of that earlier era, but will likely be more acceptable for listeners with a more contemporary worldview. The songs are uniformly decent and uniformly unremarkable, which might be a vote for more crotch and alcohol, but maybe not. The Radio Sun is unlikely to swoop in and steal your girl, but they would probably treat her better than you do, so watch out, they’ll win her in the end anyway.

TUNE INTO METALEXPRESSRADIO.COM at NOON & MIDNIGHT (EST) / 6:00 & 18:00 (CET) TO HEAR THE BEST TRACKS FROM THIS UPCOMING RELEASE!!!