Moritz

Undivided

Price: 11.95

Review / Notes: What with one thing and another, it’s taken me a while to get to grips with this second CD offering from Greg Hart and Moritz, so apologies to all concerned for the timing. To recap, Moritz were a London based sextet who had a brief tenure in the mid 80’s, shining with promise but never quite grabbing enough attention in the right places to land that all elusive record deal. Having called it quits in 1988, it would be some two decades before their debut album as such ‘City Streets’ (although this was more of a collection of their best works) emerged through Hart’s own Harmony Factory imprint. Proffering a keyboard heavy, pomp fuelled brand of melodic mayhem, ‘City Streets’ was actually pretty good when you took everything into account, the warm reception it received prompting Greg to reactivate the band for another waltz around the dance floor. Some 18 months or so later and Moritz have duly returned with ‘Undivided’, a mixture of songs old and new. Firstly, you’ll need to get past the fact that ‘Undivided’ was recorded on a budget (so don’t expect any slick, multimillion dollar production job), but once you do, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Despite one or two dodgy backing vocals at times, the strength of the twelve songs which comprise the album really does start to shine through after a couple of spins. In Pete Scallan they have an excellent singer; his soulful, expressive voice imbuing the songs with emotion. And far from the AOR by numbers which some might have been expecting, tracks such as ‘Can’t Get Away’ (written by Laurence Archer), ‘Undivided’, ‘Can’t Stop The Angels’ and ‘Without Love’ show a maturity and sophistication which belies a much broader pantheon of hard rock influences. Rob Evans over at Powerplay has gone on record saying this is as good as anything he’s heard by a UK AOR band in a long time, and the workman like production aside, I’d tend to agree with him. (D.Cockett)