In the liner notes of Boston’s 2013 release Life, Love & Hope (LLH), band leader Tom Scholz says “When I started this album over ten years ago….”.  I’m not sure what he was doing during those ten years but it couldn’t have been just this album. Three of the eleven tracks originally appeared on 2002’s Corporate America, an album that was eight years in the making and did not garner positive reviews from either critics or fans.  Scholz put failure of the album on the record company, Artemis Records, saying that they didn’t promote the record enough.  By including three of those tracks on LLH, he claimed to be righting a wrong.

LLH is just not a good album.  The songs are not up to the standards that were set by the first three albums (Boston, Don’t Look Back and Third Stage).  Personally I enjoyed 1994’s Walk On, which is far superior than what we have here.  There are three major issues with this release. 1. The songs just aren’t that great , 2. The production is just strange, 3. Why in God’s name did Tom Scholz use such terrible sounding drum machines?.

We’ll start with #1.  Most people agree that the original Boston album is by far the band’s best.  There was not a clunker on the album.  Scholz says that he was rushed into the studio for the follow-up Don’t Look Back which resulted in inferior songs.  That may be true but the album still had some standout tracks. The title track was one of the band’s best and more than makes the album a worthwhile listen.  None of that is true on LLH. The lyrics are almost juvenile at times.  From the title track:

Everybody says they do, but you know they don’t

They say they’re looking out for you, but you know they won’t

There are a couple of OK tracks.  The instrumental “Last Day of School” is VERY Jim Steinman-ish, “Sail Away” shows that towards the end of his life Brad Delp could still sing his ass off.  Lead track “Heaven On Earth” could have been good but it’s held back by a less than stellar chorus. Back on the older albums , even through Walk On, the vocals soared along with the guitars, creating extremely melodic phrases and that’s what’s missing here.  Think of the tracks “Don’t Look Back” or “I Need Your Love” it was a combination of vocals kicking in on the chorus and the guitars playing off the vocals into solos.  On LLH there are NO guitar solos that come to mind and the choruses just meander.

On to #2, the production.  Going back to the chorus on “Heaven On Earth”, it’s a weird mix of David Victor and someone singing in a low register that completely overpowers all the instruments.  Then on other songs like “Didn’t Mean to Fall In Love”, where one would expect the guitars to really open up they’re kept in the background. Most of the songs sound muddled. Scholz proudly says that the album was recorded using the same analog equipment that all Boston albums have been recorded on since the 70s, perhaps it’s time for an upgrade.

Finally, #3.  In the early 80s I got a small Casio keyboard for Christmas, not only could you play piano and other sounds but it also allowed for synth drums to play along with.  Most of the drums on this album sound like my Casio keyboard.  OK, maybe not that bad, but there is no need for such metallic , fake sounding drums when the band still has a real drummer for touring. Terrible.

Maybe it’s time for Tom Scholz to do an album in a realistic time period of 2-3 years and see if that helps.  There’s no way it would be any worse than this. Sorry.

Band website: http://www.bandboston.com