Kiss drummer shines and sparkles on his own
Artiste: Peter Criss
Nationality: American
Album: One for all
Year: 2007
Label: Megaforce
Genre: Rock
Tracks
One for all
Doesn't get better than this
Last night
What a difference a day makes
Hope
Faces in the crowd
Send in the clowns
Falling all over again
Whisper
Heart behind these hands
Memories
Space ace
Chronological position: Fifth album
Familiarity: Zero, other than his stuff with Kiss
Interesting Factoid: Uh, I used to laugh at this guy's solo efforts?
Impression: So much better than I had expected: just blew me away!
Best track(s): One for all, Doesn't get better than this, Last night, Whisper, Heart behind these hands --- hell, just the whole album!
Worst track(s): Not a single one.
Intention: Radically rethink my attitude to this guy's music.
Comments: Holy crapola! Two tracks in and I am
gobsmacked! This is brilliant! And I expected nothing special at all. A sort of a cross between Springsteen, Axl and Stevie Ray, with a lot of great acoustic guitar and some really hooky rock tunes, second track
Doesn't get better than this has me wondering if this is indeed true, and as it slips on into the third song, a beautiful laidback ballad, I'm having a major rethink about Peter Criss. I always considered him to be the weak link, even the joke in Kiss. I used to laugh at his solo albums going for fifty pence (yeah, it's that long ago, when we had our own currencies!) and sneer at his obvious lack of appeal, but what I'm hearing here is making an ignorant idiot out of me. Not only is he a capable singer --- I'm not going to say he's great, cos he's not, but he can carry a tune most of the time --- he also writes some damn fine material and isn't afraid to move away on certain tangents that distance his music from that usually associated with his parent band.
It's almost a total remove from Kiss indeed, with covers of the old classics
What a difference a day makes and
Send in the clowns, both of which are handled beautifully and expertly, the latter it seems with the help of a full orchestra. Who said this man was only a drummer, living in the shadow of Simmons, Frehley and Stanley? Okay, so this album hardly ever rocks out, but the cool, laidback acoustic rock Criss purveys on “All for one” is smooth, relaxing and very mature, for a guy who could have tried to recapture his glory days by racking off a load of hard'n'fast metal and songs about “wimmen” --- which, for all I know, he may have done on previous albums --- and what results is a very tempered, balanced and above all enjoyable album, from the edgy blues of
Heart behind these hands to the semi-live anthem
Faces in the crowd. I really have to take my hat off to the guy, and to paraphrase the title of one of the two covers here, what a difference actually listening to the guy's music makes. Instead of sneering at what I had never heard or experienced, and now very much appreciate. Catman one, Trollheart nil!