Home Artist links Label link

Landmarq - Thunderstruck

Artist:	Landmarq
Title:	Thunderstruck
Label:	Synergy Records SYN003
Length(s):	58 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1999
Month of review:	04/2000

Line up

Dave Wagstaffe - drums
Uwe D'Rose - guitars
Steve Gee - bass
Steve Leigh - keyboards
Tracy Hitchings - vocals

Tracks

1)	Pinewood Avenue	6.14
2)	Solitary Witness	5.38
3)	Science Of Coincidence	4.44
4)	Tailspin	5.02
5)	The Overlook	9.20
6)	Between Sleeping And Dreaming	9.18
7)	Borders	4.33
8)	Summer Madness	10.47

Summary

After four studio albums time for a live one, featuring tracks from both the Wilson and the Hitchings period, but all sung by Hitchings.

The music

After a bombastic beginning, Pinewood Avenue is a bit of a hasty, percussive piece. This version is alright, but I'm not terribly fond of the song itself. Solitary Witness opens with something similar to The Overlook. Then we get the anthemic piece itself, with Hitchings sing in a rather slow, ponderous fashion and she seems to overdo it a bit here, going too much for dramatism. The song is definitely different. Alternating rock/pop with slower pieces we are now again to encounter an up-tempo piece. This is the title track of the latest album. Sounds a bit lightweight (as more of the shorter tracks from the latest album do), but the keyboard parts are quite nice. Tailspin is a very very slow piece from Infinity Parade. It is audible that the bass player Steve Gee was responsible for it, because he has a strong role here. The song is quite much faster than on the studio album. The central part of this album must be the terrific The Overlook. A great track with strong solo's on both guitar and keyboards and passionately sung lyrics. It is too bad that not more of these "long" tracks from the last album were put on this album. Of course, it would easily have become a double album then. The quiet ballad Between Sleeping And Dreaming is lengthened in a good way (to almost double the length of the original) and has good build-up toward the powerful ending. The next one, Borders, is not one of the strongest tracks of Landmarq. It is a bit of a plodding, sing-a-long, but with nice a guitar solo from D'Rose. In the final track the bandmembers are introduced eloquently by miss Hitchings (or is Mrs?).

The booklet contains numerous pictures of the band members including Tracy in the persona of a siren.

Conclusion

A professional live album, that contained fewer of MY favourite tracks than I'd had hoped. Best tracks for me were The Overlook and Between Sleeping And Dreaming. The live tracks are different in some(times many) respects. In fact many of them were originally sung by Damian Wilson and hence to have heard the Hitchings versions, you must have seen them live.