ROBIN BECK
Do You Miss Me
Fronteris Records 2005
www.robinbeckrocks.com

Read the Robin Beck interview

What’s the 4-1-1?
The singer returns to the scene with her sixth solo set of soul tinged rock and roll. This is her first solo material since her 2003 CD Wonderland.

Genre
Melodic rock

The Good
Beck’s voice is very solid here. It took me a while to figure out who she reminded me of while listening to the album. She reminds me of the singer for the one album band Witness, Debbie Davis. Obviously given Robin Beck’s bio, she was on the scene beforehand but since this is my first exposure to her, I make the connections where I can. Anyway, her voice is generally strong throughout the album. It has a quality to it that I can only refer to as being 'smoky'. The album itself has a crisp tight sound to the production. It has a definite melodic sense to it, but without crossing over into anything resembling the pop music sell out factor.

The songs are pretty good. I found myself enjoying most of them, but there are four songs that stand above the rest. The first one is “Your Love Is Tough.” It has vocal track that has an edgy raspy quality to it I found very appealing. I also liked the song “What About Us.” There are a couple of moments where Beck appears to have trouble reaching the higher notes called for in the song, but that doesn’t overshadow the hard driving up tempo quality of the song. Oh, and there’s some real nice guitar work on this track as well.

The other two songs I liked were probably the two I consider the absolute best tracks on the CD. “Coming Back For More” is just an outstanding song. Everything that went into making this song gelled perfectly. You’d be hard pressed to top that song, but she managed to do it here with the song “The Safest Place (I Wanna Be Strong)” which would have no problem standing shoulder to shoulder with the best of the 80’s rock power ballads.

The Bad
There’s a couple of songs here that start off great, but a curiously weak delivery during the chorus left me sort of disillusioned with the material. The opening title track to the album was one of those tracks, the other was “Takin’ a Ride.”
Beck works with a lot of outside writers and while that is a good thing on a lot of the tracks, I can’t help feel that some of the tracks are more filler than killer, particularly the song “Stone By Stone.” The material available to me as I doesn’t say who wrote the individual songs, but there does appear to be a need to do a better job picking from the material offered.

The Verdict
As a music fan, it always amazes me how I am still able to miss out on artists only to stumble across them when I least expect it. I’m pretty pleased with this album, despite a couple of missteps. If you like female fronted melodic rock, this isn’t a bad place to start listening.

Did You Know?
Robin Beck is married to House of Lords singer James Christian, who provides backing vocals on this album.

She had a #1 hit with the song “First Time” in the U.K. The song was used as a theme for a Coca-Cola commercial.

Songwriting contributors on this album include a veritable who’s who of hit songwriters including Desmond Child (Bon Jovi/Kiss), Amy Sky (Heart), Marc Jordan (Kansas, Cher, Amanda Marshall), and Michael Bolton.

Rating: out of 5

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James Christian - Meet the Man

-- Jay Roberts