Whether you realize it or not, you subconsciously have a pecking order in your mind for the genres and music scenes you care about. Perhaps you are someone who loves modern thrash but doesn't care for blackened grindcore. Maybe you follow the comings and goings of various European DJs in progressive house. Maybe you are someone who only loves outlaw country and noise pop but can't stand progressive rock...or albums like the one I'm about to review here.

Whatever your poison, we are all aware of the bands and artists in their little stylistic corners of the world that stand heads and shoulders above others in the arena. Maybe they have an energy that eludes their peers, or perhaps there's something special to the songs themselves or even the way they put on a live performance. You rank them & prioritize them in your head without even realizing it. But all you had to do was hear them once and you knew they were magic. It didn't take 20 listens. It just took one.

For AOR and 80's-centric rock enthusiasts like myself, Work Of Art were that magic bullet in 2008. They formed in 1992 in Sweden, but didn't release their debut album Artwork until founding guitar virtuoso Robert Sall managed to convince an unknown but insanely talented singer named Lars Sasfund to quit his day job and front the music he was writing. It took fifteen years of fanagling, but eventually stars aligned and Lars decided to throw in his lot with the band. Things got moving quickly after that: The suits at Frontiers Records only had to hear a single demo before immediately signing them in 2007.

It only takes a few seconds into opening number 'Why Do I?" to make you think that fifteen years of Sall painstakingly sharpening his songwriting as he fruitlessly tried to recruit Lars into the fold was actually to our (the audience's) benefit. These guys have a terrific, absolutely cracking sense of melody, and its only made better once Lars and his charismatic voice take the spotlight. By the time 'Maria' and the fantastic 'Camelia' arrive, the band's source of musical inspiration suddenly becomes very clear: its late 70's/early 80's Toto! It really is an uncanny resemblance to the nth degree, and you kinda want to applaud them: Toto are a MUCH harder group to emulate than, say, Journey or Survivor.

If the songwriting was weak in any way, such a comparison would be fairly eerie, but Work Of Art managed to beat the masters at their own game here in two specific ways. Firstly, some of the stuff here is heavier than their primary influence: listen to that spacy, surprisingly modern axework on 'Cover Me' or the swaggering 'Lost Without Your Love'. Secondly, Toto never put out an album from start to finish besides their self-titled where the killer hooks just kept comin' from beginning to end. Hell, Artwork has so many stellar choruses and bridges from song-to-song that its almost overwhelming the first time you spin it, but that's such a great problem for an album to have ya know? Normally people complain about the opposite (too many songs, not enough memorability). Hell, they even save the best for last: with it's ominous chords and huge riff, 'One Hour' is one of the coolest closing songs I've ever heard on a non-concept record in any genre.

In closing: this album (and more specifically this band) is the pinnacle of AOR in the modern era, and while they manage to keep topping themselves (2011's In Progress is also a melodic monster, and this year's Framework is going to kick ass too), nobody else comes close.