Customer Reviews

Heartland Cafe

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An exellent CD With backing vocals by Marie Fredriksson!!! First Roxette minialbum. Powerpop in its ultimate form!!!

I wasn't expecting much when I bought this album but as a Roxette fan I needed it in my collection.
And yet I was pleasantly surprised; yes- almost blown away.
What I heard was superb 80's music even thou I am usually not particularly fond of most 80' classical compositions.
This album is better then anything else I heard from Per Gessle's solo career, it beats Son of a Plumber and blows Mazarin out of the water..... at least in my eyes (ears).

While I can usually only listen to a song 5-10 times before it gets boring it hasn't happened with these tracks.
Here is how I would rate the songs:

1. Heartland (this is just the intro and not an actual track)
2. Run Run Run 5 stars
3. Break Another Heart 5 stars (beautiful esp. with Maries voice)
4. Teaser Japanese 5 stars (took a while to get used to this one but now I find this piece to be very masterfully written)
5. Another Place, Another Time 5 stars
6. Demon Emptiness 5 stars
7. Dreaming 5 stars
8. When Love's on the Phone 3.5 stars (good, but nothing special imo)
9. Can You Touch Me? 5 stars
10. Even If It Hurts (It's Alright) 4 stars
11. Heartland Café 5 stars
12. Kiss from a Stranger 3 stars (nothing special but not bad, typical 70's or 80's sound)
13. Young Girl 1 star (this is the only song on this album that I dislike, I usually skip it because I find it annoying)
14. Anytime 3 stars (the songs isn't bad but its sounds more like he was testing his voice then an actual song, I would say a bit above average)
15. Mr. Twilight 4 stars (nice pop song)
16. Rock On 4 stars (they put the weird song at the end, but it's a good track)

The album has about equal amount of fast and slower pop/rock songs.
I expect to enjoy this album in years to come and it will probably turn into a personal classic for me.

Quite some time before Roxette this is Per's first attempt to land a hit internationally. It did not work, but that is not really to blame on the album. Heartland Cafe is really nice, well-produced '80 pop/rock and overall a good LP.
However, the quality of the work is not consistent: Some songs are more than annoying (uncreative music, boring standard lyrics, very mediocre vocals, pseudo. Let's just mention "Young Girl", "When love's on the phone", "Mr. Twilight") whereas other songs really stand out as one of the more interesting and finer songs to hit the radio in the '80s ("Demon Emptyness", "Dreaming", "Another Place, Another Time"). And the title song has what it takes to become a classic - it was just never given a fair chance. If you skip a few songs (thanks to programmable CD-players ;-) ) you get an underrated, interesting and pleasant '80s album. Not more, not less.

it's hard to believe that way before "pearls of Passion" and the first major hit album "the look" the roxette duo were at it trying to create an album that would compliment their powerful voices.
heartland cafe is very different cos it has per on lead vocal and marie as back up. It seeems that per didn't have much confidence as lead vocal and in some parts of this album it shows.
but we have to relise that they are only starting out and still in the process of finding out what works and what doesn't.
the songs on the album are strong and i like per's style of writing but some line's lyrically annoy me deeply and i think sometimes he could of made a bit more effort refering to "have a nice day".
but if your a roxette collector this is the album to have.