Thunder Please Remain Seated
Album Review By Adam McCann
Ear Music Records – Rock
It has been two years since Thunder released their last studio offering ‘Rip It Up’ and it wouldn’t be long before the fun time London rockers announced that their next venture would be ‘Please Remain Seated’, an acoustic album featuring reworkings of their back catalogue.
To release an album of this nature can be a risk, fans of the band are often embedded in their ways and are often take an instant dislike to a band changing their favourite songs; remember when Bon Jovi took this chance with their 2003 album ‘This Left Feels Right’? However, with ‘Please…’ Thunder have taken the precaution not to touch their hits and stick almost exclusively to album tracks with the exception of ‘Low Life In High Places’ which gets the acoustic reworking, but other than an added choir, there isn’t much change.
What Thunder give with ‘Please…’ is an album of enjoyable reworkings, tracks such as ‘Bigger Than Both Of Us’, ‘Empty City’ and ‘Girl’s Going Out Of Her Head’ are given new leases of life with through an injection of acoustic blues, jazz piano, walking bass and gospel choir. This gives these songs a massively different dynamic by adding a new level of enjoyment and presenting their songs in a mature, easy listening and above all fun format. Unfortunately, some of these tracks don’t exactly develop as reworked, ‘Future Train’ shows little deviation from the alternate version presented on ‘The Rare, The Raw And The Rest’ whilst ‘She’s So Fine’ doesn’t really work in this format and a different song would have been better chosen.
‘Please…’ is very enjoyable and as always with Thunder, it is of the highest quality work. However, there is not much here to drag in new listeners and therefore, ‘Please…’ is best reserved for hardcore fans and collectors of Thunder’s music.
Rating : 76/100
MHF Magazine/Adam McCann
