Album Review: Stardust - Highway To Heartbreak

 

We grow as people as life moves forward, but genres of music do not always do the same thing. Take AOR, for an example. The bands playing the style now are doing the exact same things the bands twenty-plus years ago were doing. They write the same melodies, play with the same keyboard tones, and are proud of their lack of evolution. AOR fans are loyal, and will eat up anything that sounds just like the music they already love. For Stardust, that goes even further, as this album finds them writing songs with AOR stalwarts, which only cements their fanatical devotion to recreating the past.

Stardust's version of AOR is the kind that thinks it rocks, when it really doesn't. They have a bit more guitar in the mix, but it's not a heavy guitar. When they try to hit a bit chord, it sounds small, and the weakness of the entire effort is obvious. You don't have to rock hard, but if you don't there needs to be strong, sturdy hooks. Stardust doesn't deliver those either. These songs aren't big sing-along numbers either. They're the type of songs with simple, one-line refrains. I would offer a comparison from the past to the style of their writing, but I don't have to. They put a cover of Pat Benetar's "Heartbreaker" as the second track on the album.

Let me break down that decision for a second. On their debut album, the second song that expect you to hear is a cover. Not just a cover, but a cover that doesn't rock even a fraction as hard as a song recorded over thirty years ago. I'm not sure why they wanted to make clear they didn't think their own songs were good enough to put front-and-center, nor why they recorded a version that pales in comparison to the original, and still decided to put it on the album. That's a vote of no-confidence in this album, from band itself!

Or maybe they put the song on there just so there would be something to remember them for, because the rest of the album doesn't offer anything but AOR cliches, and not done especially well. Considering they brought in a couple of old hands in the style whose own work has been faltering in recent years, I should have expected this. Stardust are a young band, and maybe they can grow into something with time, but they aren't there yet. Their songs aren't sharp enough, their choices to help them write didn't work, and their decision regarding that cover song are fascinating in how wrong they are. There's a lot to learn, but not much time.