Album Review: Johnny Gioeli - One Voice

With the ways the music industry has changed, and artists need to do what they need to do if they're going to make a living, one thing I've noticed is I'm coming across more and more examples where I hear an artist multiple times in a given year. Sometimes that can be good, but often I find myself getting burned out on a particular sound. There is only so much of any one person or voice you can hear before it all blends together. Johnny Gioeli is a great singer, and an underrated one at that, but this solo album marks the third record he has appeared on this year. The first two were both good, but I am not finding myself hungry to hear his voice on yet more new music. Not yet, at least.

"Drive" starts things off, and makes a quick case that this is going to be a different record than what we usually hear from Johnny. He has spent his career singing melodic metal with Axel Rudi Pell, and AOR with several groups, but this record is much more of a modern pop/rock approach. It was pointed out to me that what he sounds like here is Bon Jovi in the post "It's My Life" era, where he was writing directly for radio. It's not altogether wrong. There are definitely times on this record where you can hear hints of that.

What makes this record interesting is hearing Johnny on this kind of pop material, as most of the time the style is populated by singers with voices so clean they lack any edge whatsoever. The grit in Johnny's voice gives us a slightly different sound than we would be used to from this style. This isn't that far removed from the first two Daughtry albums, but it sounds it because of his voice. It's something I actually like quite a bit.

"Drive", "It", and "One Voice" start the record with a trio of songs that hit the pop/rock formula perfectly. There's snap, energy, and a real hookiness to the tracks that makes them what would be great summer tracks. That momentum slows down in the middle of the record, though. "Running" and "Deeper" pull back quite a bit on the energy, and because of that the hooks become much more subdued, and the tracks don't have the same appeal to them. Coming back-to-back doesn't help mollify their effect either.

The majority of the album keeps things pepped up, and all of that material works well. If the record Johnny made with Deen Castronovo earlier in the year was too adult contemporary for you, this one might win you back over. This one is a more contemporary record, and in fact appears to me to be more engaging than some of the AOR stuff he has put out in recent years. Many of those efforts are so polished and sanded down they aren't exciting, whereas this one sounds like Johnny is more engaged with the music. That should be, since it's his name on the cover this time.

I've always thought Johnny Gioeli is a hugely talented singer. Most of the time, though, he's been on records that aren't quite my thing. This album is the closest to the music I grew up loving, which might explain why I like it more than some of the more notable albums he's been on. "One Voice" is a good statement to make as a solo album. I'm sure there will be some people who think it's too mainstream, but that's sort of the point. Melodic rock is supposed to be available to the masses. Johnny is reminding us of that.