PUSHKING
The World As We Love It
Riot Entertainment, 2011

By Shane Pinnegar

I’ll admit that I don’t know who Pushking are, or what they’ve done in the past – but I can tell you one thing: their rolodex reads like a “who’s who” of hard rock!

“The World As We love It” is a trainspotter’s delight – Billy F Gibbons, Alice Cooper, Steve Vai, Paul Stanley, Joe Bonamassa, Glenn Hughes, Dan McCafferty – holy hell, that’s just for starters!

How about Steve Lukather, Nuno Bettencourt, Jeff Scott Soto, Eric martin, Joe Lynn Turner, Keri kelli, Graham Bonnet, Udo Dirkschneider and Jorn Lande?

There’s a load more on there as well – so you can be sure that the performances are all magnificent, but the concern with SO MANY guests of such a high calibre is that the pudding is being somewhat over-egged…

In fact, the down side of having such world class players and voices on display is that it shines the spotlight even more on the songwriting, which is good throughout… but not always great. By the end of the album my mind was wandering into “they must have owed the band a favour” territory.

Not that this is a bad album in ANY way though – in fact it’s rather good. It’s just that we tend to judge the talent herein harsher than if they were unknowns: we expect our stars to always be GREAT, not just good or even very good.

Glenn Hughes fares best with the epic ‘Tonight’, his Black Country Communion cohort Joe Bonamassa providing a ‘Parisienne Walkways’ flavoured guitar line of no little beauty. Also noteworthy is Nazareth’s Dan McCafferty’s guest spot on ‘I Love you’, his gravelly vocals tearing strips from your heart as he declares his love.

Album closer ‘Kukarracha’, featuring Joe Lynn Turner, Eric Martin, Glenn Hughes, Paul Stanley AND Graham bonnet all sharing lead vocals sounds like it was fun to record and is mildly infectious… but nothing can stop it sounding like a three chord disco pop song done in a mid-80’s (the lean years) Kiss style.

What shouldn’t be forgotten amidst the wall-to-wall star turns is that this is still a Pushking album – and a very good one at that (albeit several songs too long with no less than NINETEEN tracks on offer). It didn’t need all the guest stars to be very good, and whilst they will surely get the album more international attention, I for one would like to see what Pushking can do by themselves.