Grand Hotel

The Explorers Club | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 14, 2012)
• Original Release Date: 2012
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rock Ridge Music
• ASIN: B006OAB5RC
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,563 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The Explorers Club hopes for its sophomore album, Grand Hotel, are pretty ambitious to undertake, if it weren't for the fact that the South Carolina sextet had already gone a long way toward accomplishing it on their debut album Freedom Wind…"quite remarkable" (USA Today). Grand Hotel puts the band with producer/mixing engineer Mark Linett, known work on the re-issues of the Beach Boys' Smile and Pet Sounds. The songs, recall the likes Herb Alpert jamming with psychedelic bands…the music of a James Bond flick…Roy Orbison, Neil Diamond records… the most upbeat 4 Seasons or Grass Roots hits.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Pop February 14, 2012

By GlobalChangeSupercenter5

Format:Audio CD

A tour through the bounty of American Pop from the 60s and 70s - a self-contained world of masterful tenor singing, instantly familiar hooks, expert harmonies, and well-mixed playing, featuring scores of could-have been hits from the heyday of pre-corporate American pop, coast to coast.
This is a sophomore hit - okay, on second thought, a stupendous masterpiece of joyous music that should sweep the Grammys, well, the Grammys of 1974, not a slump in any way, though the question remains, at least from afar, on some of the songs where a somewhat more pedestrian singer than Jason Brewer is doing the leads - is this generation's Brian Wilson too shy to command the spotlight enough?
The nods to our pop heroes are many, but so what - reward the boys and buy the album!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars In all fairness, I'm a little biased... but... February 21, 2012

By Marc Nathan

Format:MP3 Music

This album has been in the works for the better part of the last two years. The evolution of "Grand Hotel," involved a multitude of song choices, and then a variety of band members, and finally a world-class mixer to pull it all together. From the opening strains of "Acapulco (Sunrise)" to the horns trumpeting the arrival of the first "radio single," "Run Run Run" and then laced all the way the the haunting close of the bombastic "Open The Door," this album will have you scratching your head more than once as you try to figure out how to reach the tens of thousands of people that you KNOW would fall in love with it if given the chance. Probably skewing a bit older at first, the fan of The Explorers Club has heard, and can reference any number of influences from the 60's and early 70's, including The Association, The Grass Roots, The Turtles, Neil Diamond, Roy Orbison, The Walker Brothers, and of course Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb and the great Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. They're all here, in 2012, alive and well, and EC-leader Jason Brewer has nailed the references, and yet made each one his own. While Freedom Wind was polarized, hailed, and occasionally panned as a "Beach Boys rip-off," "Grand Hotel" trumpets originality while allowing you to take your musical trip down memory lane. Yes, I'm a little biased. I am the "executive producer" of this disc, and it's been a labour of love for the past year plus, and I serve as the band's manager (at 4.99 for the album on mp3, my share is... well, you get it... we're almost giving it away to let you get it and share it and turn your friends on to it, and make it so we can all afford to live to see album three from this band... ) "Grand Hotel," is a grand experience, and I'm proud to be associated, and I urge you to owe it to yourself to get your friends engaged. Check in... now! (Oh, and if you work in advertising, write films or television shows, have a cinematic background, and/or live in the past... you'll find many uses for the music on this record.) Favorite tracks: "Go For You" "Sweet Delights" "Run Run Run" "Weight Of The World" "Open The Door" "Anticipatin" "I've Been Waiting" "Grand Hotel" "Bluebird" and more ;)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Pop perfection March 9, 2012

By Music maven

Format:Audio CD

What a perfectly enjoyable CD this is! Every song is strong, breezy, optimistic, and indelible. I go around singing Run, Run, Run to myself all day. What I find particularly remarkable about the CD is that it doesn't feel like most 60s-styled efforts these days. There's no irony, no lo-fi stumbling, and no slavish imitation on display. These songs, and the playing and production, could easily have come straight off the radio in 1968, but it doesn't feel like a modern band duplicating that sound---it sounds like real thing. The feeling is right, the singing is right, the playing is spot on, and the production is flawless. That's the most impressive thing on display here: the production, arrangements, and songwriting are astonishingly sophisticated and pitch perfect. But in the end, none of that matters at all. The fact is that these are great songs played by great musicians and packaged in a way that brings out their best qualities. Just buy it, put it on, and start smiling. It's snowing as I write this, but these guys make me feel like the sun is shining.