X - Def Leppard

I'm a huge Def Leppard fan. A loan of their "Hysteria" album in 1987 changed my musical preferences forever, and I've counted them as my favourite band ever since. Much like with my favourite novelist, Stephen King, I've spent the last few years getting everything I can on the day of release and enjoying it but, often ending up disappointed in some way.

This album was different. This album had managed to worry me before ...
...was that Joe Elliott's hair now looks like one of the Gallagher brothers from Oasis, only blonde. So I worried they were going indie. My second worry was that they'd taken to working with a couple of producers who had previously worked with Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. It's fair to say that Def Leppard were always on the softer, poppier side of rock, but I didn't want them suddenly being on the rockier side of pop! The DJ at my favourite ... more

I'm a huge Def Leppard fan. A loan of their "Hysteria" album in 1987 changed my musical preferences forever, and I've counted them as my favourite band ever since. Much like with my favourite novelist, Stephen King, I've spent the last few years getting everything I can on the day of release and enjoying it but, often ending up disappointed in some way.

This album was different. This album had managed to worry me before it had even been released! The first cause of concern was that Joe Elliott's hair now looks like one of the Gallagher brothers from Oasis, only blonde. So I worried they were going indie. My second worry was that they'd taken to working with a couple of producers who had previously worked with Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. It's fair to say that Def Leppard were always on the softer, poppier side of rock, but I didn't want them suddenly being on the rockier side of pop! The DJ at my favourite rock club had already termed them "Deflife" after playing the single.

Musically, my concern was that the lead single from the album, "Now", wasn't really all that impressive, and the available snippets from the website didn't inspire much more hope. Worse was to come when the NME rated the album very highly indeed. They did the same with Terrorvision's "Shaving Peaches" album, which turned out to be the worst of the band's career. They also called it "the best rock album since Andrew WK's 'I Get Wet'." Damned with faint praise, maybe, as that album is only about a year old and wasn't actually all that good! I'd hope that this would be better than that.

Needless to say, my plans involved going over the road and buying the album in WHSmith at lunch. I'd got a call from a colleague, whose girlfriend is as big as fan as I am, who said that there'd been a mix up, and they only had 4 copies in, one of which he'd reserved. He advised me to do the same. I decided to take my chances. Sure enough, by 12 'o' clock, they'd failed to sell a single copy. This was not looking at all good!

And so home, and to the CD player on my PC. The book I'd also talked myself into buying before I left the shop had turned out to be very good, and so I was hoping I'd be in luck twice. Plus, there was the inclusion of a second bonus track that I thought was only going to be on the Japanese version of the album, according to the website.

The album flies by rapidly, even for just short of an hour. Not because it's so good you forget where you are, but because it fades into the background, and passes you by whilst you're doing something else. You realise that it's there only at a few points, and mostly after it's stopped.

It's the traditional sound of Def Leppard, polished soft-rock, with harmonies running through most of the album. There's some big ballads, some rockier tunes, all with the guitars close to the fore and Joe Elliott's distinctive, slightly rough vocals in front of it all.

Opener "Now" doesn't impress on the album version any more than it did as a single and sounds strangely tinny at points, even on my stereo, which is very unusual for a Def Leppard track, where the production has always been of the highest quality. "Unbelievable" is a big ballad, with the traditional Def Leppard harmonies, which is trying to emulate "Animal" from the "Hysteria" album, as has every one of their ballads from that last 15 years but, like them, falls short. It's well done, but provides nothing new.

"You're So Beautiful" gets things going a little more, and is certainly my favourite track on the album. The vocal harmonies through the chorus are present, but the overall sound, especially the guitar work is more towards the rock end of the pop-rock spectrum, evoking thoughts more of 1983's "Pyromania" album than any of the band's later work.

"Everyday" is perhaps the closest the band has come to repeating the glory of "Animal", but still falls short, as it's a little too light, musically speaking, to be truly in that bracket. "Long Long Way to Go" is a lovely ballad, but again too light to be a power ballad. It compares most closely to "Miss You in a Heartbeat", a track that was rejected for 1992's "?Adrenalize" album, and given to another band to record.

Still, while they have seemed to concentrate largely on the ballads for a while, Def Leppard can still put a rock song together. With a guitar riff that sounds as if it?s been taken from "Armageddon It", one of the rockier tracks from "Hysteria", "Four Letter Word" has everything you want from your favourite rock band. The vocal harmonies are there, the rock guitar is there, and Joe's voice means you can't escape this being nearly classic Def Leppard.

"Torn to Shreds" has a perfect pop-rock ballad chorus, with the ever-present chorus vocal harmonies. However, the verses are almost acoustic, and it has a disjointed feel to it. "Love Don't Lie" is uninspired, and the guitar effects in the verses make it sound like a nod towards early 1990's indie-dance songs. Early Primal Scream springs most easily to mind. "Gravity" has a bit of rap, and some almost disco sounding effects - not from the 70's disco age, but from the Stock-Aitken-Waterman school of disco, from the 1980's. The band tried something similar with "Slang", the title track from 1995's "Slang" album, and it sounds so unlike Def Leppard that it sticks out, but not in a good way. Fortunately, it's the shortest track, and only lasts for two and a half minutes.

"Cry" has a great rock guitar, but the vocal is distorted, a little like "Truth?", again from 1995's "Slang". As that was, in my opinion, Def Leppard's worst album, it's not a well-received inclusion. "Girl Like You" has a vocal that wouldn't sound too out of place as an American TV theme tune, which is not meant as a compliment, and by the time the chorus comes in, it would again fit quite nicely on "Slang", or perhaps 1999's "Euphoria". NME described this track as a "Hard-rock banger", which is true, I guess but, appropriately enough for barbeque season, the banger seems to be only half cooked, not really ready for consumption. Again, happily, it's a short track, at just under three minutes.

"Let Me Be the One" is a toned down, slowed down ballad, of the sort that Joe Elliott's rough voice doesn?t quite match. However, it's nicely done, the vocal harmonies are there again, and it sounds as if it would have sat very nicely next to "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad" on 1992's "Adrenalize". "Scar" sounds like the brother of "Paper Sun" from 1999's "Euphoria", a decent soft rock tune, and one of the noisier tracks on the album, if not one of the best. It does have the best guitar solo, though, as well as the longest, so it's bound to be in the live shows.

The bonus tracks comprise "Kiss The Day", a mid paced ballad, with the guitar and vocal harmonies sounding a little Beatles like at times, and an acoustic version of "Long Long Way to Go", making me think of "Retro-Active", which had two versions of "Miss You in a Heartbeat". On that occasion, the acoustic version was the better one, and the same is also true here. It's a light, fluffy ballad, and does better in this format, as it's not got the strength to be a proper rock power-ballad.

Overall, I'm not going to be disappointed. Def Leppard have managed to not go indie, or too pop, or become like any of the other bands the NME fawns over. What they have done is become themselves again. They borrow from various different parts of their own back catalogue, meaning that the sound and style jumps about like a "Greatest Hits" album, without the same quality you get from an album of that type.

Phil Collen has recently said that "looking back, 'X' is the album that should have followed 'Hysteria'." He could well be right. It's not as good as "Hysteria" by any means, but would bridge the gap between that and 1995's "Slang" better than 1992's "Adrenalize" did. The problem with that statement is that this is an album that would have been perfect 10 years ago. Now, it sounds like something that's been done before, and by the same band.

This is by no means a bad album, and there is no way you'll mistake it for anything other than a Def Leppard album. But it's not their best, and the band seem to be looking back enviously at the 10 million plus sales of "Hysteria", or having seen "Vault" in the US Top 200 for nearly every week since it was released in 1995, rather than concentrating on where they want to go. It's not a step backwards as such, but it's a side shuffle with a glance over the shoulder.

As a Def Leppard fan, I don't begrudge the £13 I bought the album for, as it does fit in nicely alongside their back catalogue and into my collection. Someone who isn't so into the band might do, however, and would be better placed spending £8.99 at CD-Wow.

If you're into soft rock generally, and not the band, or are looking for an introduction to the band, I would recommend going to their back catalogue for 1995's Greatest Hits album, "Vault" (£8.99 at CD-Wow) or 1987's "Hysteria" (£11.99 from Amazon), still one of the great soft rock albums. Eventually in time you may come back to this, but it's not the place to start.
 

...less