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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The bluesiness is back, but time wasn't on their side, November 9, 2003
When Bad Company decided to reform only 4 years after disbanding in the mid-1980s, albeit without easily-identifiable lead singer Paul Rodgers, it seemed like a good time to do it. After all, the kind of hard rock that dominated the decade owed some debt to Bad Company helping make it the stuff of hit singles as well as best-selling albums. Even without Rodgers, the band still had some commercial success to speak of, though it was with the more generic gloss-rock that was so 1980s, containing very little of the bluesiness that won Bad Company a contract with the Led Zeppelin-owned Swan Song Records. When 1992's HERE COMES TROUBLE only managed a solitary hit with "How About That", lead singer Brian Howe was jettisoned in favor of Robert Hart & it was with him that Bad Company recorded 1995's COMPANY OF STRANGERS.With Hart, Bad Company had a good chance of recapturing (if not exactly duplicating) the husky, blues-soaked style of Paul Rodgers, for Hart's voice was just as bluesy as his & not as all-purpose as Howe's. For COMPANY OF STRANGERS, Bad Company was now a quintet with original members guitarist Mick Ralphs & drummer Simon Kirke, Hart, second guitarist Dave "Bucket" Colwell (who played on HERE COMES TROUBLE, but was not a full member until this album) & bassist Rick Wills (formerly of Foreigner). Even with an expanded line-up, COMPANY OF STRANGERS was still the band's most stripped down & rootsy album in ages, which is reflected in the songwriting, emphasizing simple blues-based themes like betrayal, finding & losing love, and just getting crazy for a good time. The title track starts the album out on a strong note with a midtempo groove that Bad Company easily gets comfortable in. On first listen to Robert Hart's voice, you'd think that the band picked up where 1982's ROUGH DIAMONDS left off & the arena sound of the Howe-era music had never happened. The theme of this song is repeated in various forms on other tracks like "Judas My Brother" (which Hart penned himself & like most reviewers have said, is pretty darn good) & "Abandoned & Alone". Sometimes you just need to take stock of who your friends really are. When not thinking about those things, Bad Company creates some of their most infectious rockers in quite a while with good-time ditties like "Clearwater Highway", "Gimme Gimme", "Down Down Down" (someone likes to repeat their words), "Down & Dirty", "Pretty Woman" & "Dance With The Devil". The members of Bad Company may not exactly be spring chickens anymore, but that doesn't mean they can't still seek out a good time & these tunes could easily make you want to go out & paint the town. Most of Bad Company's latter-day hits were with sanitized power ballads, so COMPANY OF STRANGERS has a few slower numbers, but here, they sound less like a case of "let's get this on the radio" & more about true emotion coming through. "Where I Belong", "You're The Only Reason" & "Loving You Out Loud" are appropriately heartwarming, but not enough to make you question the band's masculinity. Even men with tough exteriors can mask hearts of gold. Only the acoustic "Little Martha" doesn't quite measure up to standards. By 1995, bands like Bad Company were no longer scaling the charts as they had been & alternative/grunge was the main focus of critics & fans. Because of this, a strong effort like COMPANY OF STRANGERS fell through the cracks where it should have been thought of as a considerable return to form. But maybe Bad Company itself was starting to see the writing on the wall & after 1996's STORIES TOLD & UNTOLD (a mixture of new songs with re-recordings of old classics sung by Robert Hart), the band had all but separated again. However, Paul Rodgers would rejoin Bad Company again by the end of the 1990s & record 4 new songs with the original line-up for their ORIGINAL BAD COMPANY ANTHOLOGY set. By the time of 2002's MERCHANTS OF COOL live album (with 2 new studio songs), only Rodgers & Simon Kirke remained (Mick Ralphs & original bassist Boz Burrell perhaps decided to bow out). Even if Ralphs & Burrell don't decide to return, here's hoping that a new Bad Company studio album with Rodgers singing on it will be in the future. In the meantime, COMPANY OF STRANGERS shows that if they did it right, Bad Company could succeed without Rodgers as frontman extraordinaire, especially if that lead singer was not too far removed from the Paul Rodgers school.
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by Bad Company 
