Unruly Child
Our Glass House

Rock is dead. Isn't it? Then it's dying, in a very long agony. Its best (or fortunate) pages have become classical music ("Classic Rock"... there's even a magazine), performed over and over again on stage with Tribute Bands or some still-living Dinosaurs. In the near future, they will be treated just like the Symphonies and Operas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries... It will happen that in any given theater, one evening they will perform "The Thieving Magpie" and the next evening "Dark Side of the Moon", and people won’t really distinguish much difference, just as most of us don’t really distinguish Bach from Debussy, and there's a two-century gap between them.

Rock has long since left, after so many years, the pole position of youth interest, and it wasn't pop, singer-songwriters, Disco, New Wave, Techno, Macarena, or Electronic that held its funeral... No, it was killed by Trap, Rap, Hip Hop, that stuff there, an anti-musical matter made of artificial groove (always the same) and words, random words on the microphone, in a pneumatic void of artistry that personally dismays, irritates, and mortifies me.

I realize rock is dead when I manage to come across, more and more rarely, tasty, even excellent contemporary rock albums, like this one (2020), works of a genre that forty years ago sold way too much, now way too little. A time when rock music releases hit you from all sides: the radios, friends, record stores, specialized magazines, concerts... And so one had to discriminate, it was impossible to keep up with everyone, the offer was massive; you had to discard the fat and continually abandon some minor names after a couple of albums to chase after something newer, different, captivating, interesting.

Now it takes the proverbial little lantern to enjoy contemporary releases of healthy and solid melodic hard rock, emphatic but measured, well-arranged, played, and sung by capable people. The Americans Unruly Child are certainly skilled and inspired, starting with the frontman, the transgender Margie Free, born Mark, endowed with a lush and robust tenor voice, an improved version of Joseph Williams of Toto. Not to mention guitarist Bruce Gowdy who has been part of a thousand bands always playing great, without overdoing it, focusing on composing at best, having the right sounds (here they are fabulous), not being the young hair metal poser like many of his colleagues at the time. What to say then about the drummer and keyboardist, two musicians with endless resumes (Yes, Doobie Brothers, Moody Blues, World Trade, Asia, Hurricane, Air Supply, Glenn Hughes...), two gentlemen musicians.

Therefore, those who appreciate refined and well-produced hard rock should give this album a tour, stopping at the impetuous "Say What You Want", savoring the celestial choirs of "Glass House", noting the great guitar sounds of "Everyone Loves You When You're Dead", the beautiful extended riff of "Talked You Out of Loving Me", the darting Toto-style choruses of "Underwater" and "Catch Up to Yesterday", the exquisite classical guitar intro of "Freedom Is a Fight". The last two songs of the album are reused from their first album (1991) and rearranged, removing their excessive patina of emphasis: better this way.