KANE ROBERTS - Saints and Sinners

Being tired of working for a master, be that even Alice Cooper, the citizen Kane (or, by his real name, Robert William Athas, so you don’t believe he’s some lost brother of Julia Roberts or lost sister of Eric Roberts) told himself that he should show the world what he’s capable of alone. So, there go a couple of solo albums. He’s an electric guitar player by formation, but one could be excused for not getting that by listening to his two releases, the self-titled one in 1987 (pfff… what albums were being released ’86 and ’87!) and then this Saints and Sinners,  in 1991. At least if we don’t think about what Satriani releases or, even worse, Alex Skolnick of Testament (the ones with jazz). To be honest, he has another solo album around 2006, but I don’t really care.

The album sounds blatantly like hair rock, hair metal, hard rock a la California, call it as you like, after all it’s the Warrant, Winger and Cinderella current. And, if we’re talking about "cheese" (as thrashers used to call it), it doesn’t mean it’s too crappy to touch.

Saints and Sinners is not an album that will knock your socks off, I don’t know if there’s something that will remain with you after you listen to it (best case scenario, you remain with what you had before). It is OK in its own right, with melody, choruses, lyrics for people, as all fellows like, not the kind that you get a headache like Kafka, to the point, so that any Californian may understand them. Looking at the song titles, you get a sudden urge for empiricism at the expense of reading: Dance Little Sister, Wild Nights, I’m Not Looking For An Angel (starts with some chick moaning as convincing as the one opening Manowar‘s Pleasure Slave). 

In conclusion, this is an album one can listen to without getting annoyed or getting a reaction like “hmm, I forgot the player was on… I should change the record”. Fighter and Too Far Gone could be said to resemble hits. I could also say that the songs were written by Roberts, some of them together with a certain gentleman called Desmond Child, and Does Anybody Falls in Love Anymore? is written by Jon Bon Jovi. So, the dude’s got some connections. Good for him. A very lenient 7 for this album, not bad, but a bit under cover.

Cristake Nota: 7