The Swedish classy hard rock
project Houston is back with a new
album. 'Relaunch II' contains 6 cover
songs from John Farnham, John O’Banion,
One Republic, Rick Springfield, Florida
Georgia Line, Lady Gaga and 4 brand new
songs from the band. A quote from
the frontman Hank Erix: "The band has
gone through some changes, we have a new
line-up and we want this album to show
that we are still paying tribute to the
music that inspired us to form the band
that is Houston today and that we're
experimenting a lot more than ever.
We’ve got a brilliant new band both on
record and live and we live in such an
interesting musical time where we can
experiment with different genres".
A very diverse album with some
excellent covers of some timeless songs,
but I like their own songs the best
actually. 'Don't Look Back' is a classic AOR song with fantastic vocals from Hank
Erix and very captivating guitars. Next
'new song' is 'Our Love', which is also
an AOR soaring song with strokes from
Toto, Survivor, Foreigner. The easygoing
and positive song 'Downtown' makes you
feel good and is a perfect song to have
in the ears when you run. The fourth
'new' song is the closing track
'Standing on the Moon'.
The cover songs are well done and
the production is flawless, but I wanted
to hear more of their own songs. I hope
that they return with a full length
album with 100% Houston songs. This felt
like an EP filled with covers.
They can do better than this.
Current line-up:
Hank Erix (Lead vocals)
Ricky Delin (Keyboards/Backing vocals)
Soufian Ma'Aoui (Bass)
Calle Hammar (Guitars/Backing vocals)
Victor Lundberg (Keyboards/Backing
vocals)
Oscar Lundström (Drums)
