The last time I met Paul Laine was ten years ago in Melbourne when he was over for the Melodic Rock Festival Australia. It was one of those great weekends where the line between musicians and fans seemed wonderfully blurred, and Paul was exactly as you’d hope – funny, engaging, generous with his time and, above all, someone who clearly still had an enormous love for music.
Ten years is a long time, but in Paul Laine’s story you have to think on an even bigger scale, because The Long Road Back isn’t just his first solo album in a decade. In many ways it’s the record he’s been waiting more than thirty years to make. Laine himself says that ever since releasing his first solo album, Stick It In Your Ear, he wondered when he’d finally get the opportunity to make its follow-up. Of course, life and music had other ideas.
Those interruptions were of course much welcomed. There was Danger Danger, then Darkhorse, Shugaazer, Jetset Junkies and, more recently, three wonderful albums with The Defiants. There were songs written, records made and countless miles travelled, but somewhere underneath it all that original solo career was apparently still waiting for him. And that makes the title The Long Road Back just about perfect.
This isn’t Paul Laine attempting to pretend the intervening years never happened. Quite the opposite. He’s described the album as both a musical journey back to his roots and a reflection of every mile he’s travelled since, with the songs carrying pieces of the life he’s lived, the people he’s encountered and the lessons learned along the way. That’s a far more interesting proposition than simply trying to make Stick It In Your Ear Part II.
And he’s certainly surrounded himself with the right people. Longtime collaborator and fellow Defiants and former Danger Danger bandmate Bruno Ravel handles bass (yes bass) and co-production, Scotty “Hooch” Taylor is behind the drums and Andrew Oye, with whom he writes film music, supplies lead guitar and collaborates on one song, with Laine and Ravel producing.
But ultimately this is unmistakably a Paul Laine record, and appropriately enough the journey starts with first single “Love Me Or Leave Me.” It’s the song Paul chose to announce what he calls a “new era” in his solo career and there’s something fitting about opening the album with something that reconnects so immediately with the melodic instincts that first put him on the map.
If you love the big hooks that are Paul’s trademark then this is the perfect opener, it’s one of those familiar riffs that immediately hits home before Paul’s distinctive voice cuts in and leads you by the scruff of the neck to an impossible catchy chorus.
From there “Don’t Let Me Go Tonite” keeps the momentum going, another song Frontiers clearly has plenty of faith in and one that comes complete with its own video. Even the title sounds like something that could have been scrawled across the back of a great melodic rock album sometime around 1989, and I mean that entirely as a compliment.
Sonically it nails that feel good summer ‘blue sky’ feeling that is so hard to capture, it’s brimming with the enthusiasm of youth and in that vein as good as anything Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams or dare I say it, Rick Springfield put out back in the day.
Check out the interview coming 27th August 2026
Three songs in, “Someday” gives us another side of the record. Co-written with guitarist Andrew Oye, it’s been described as one of the album’s more vulnerable moments and offers the opportunity to hear Laine exploring the more emotional end of the melodic rock spectrum.
Andrew Oye writes film music with Paul and this was an experimental collaboration. Paul tells me he asked Andrew to co-write a song for the record and the results are a very solid ballad with some rather nice guitar that changes the pace nicely after that crashing opening. It’s as solid a start as I’ve heard to an album all year. In the olden days we’d have had the lighters raised high for this one…
“Come Back To Me” follows and takes us further into the album. It changes things back up again and recaptures that ‘blue sky’ feel that the best Melodic Rock does, where you feel that everything is possible and the world is out there and open for you. It’s a wonderfully melodic tale of youth and possibility with some wonderful guitar.
Then there’s “Save Me Saturday Night,” which might just be one of the most wonderfully melodic-rock song titles imaginable. There’s something about those four words that immediately evokes radios, cars, neon lights and the glorious escapism that this kind of music has always done so well. Sonically it evokes vintage Bon Jovi, with production this good should be all over the radio.
That leads us into “Her Name Is Trouble,” another title that sounds reassuringly at home on a Paul Laine album and brings us towards the midpoint of the record. It’s the heaviest thing here – the spoken word intro gives way to some crunchy guitar and a hard funky verse that leads to a killer refrain and again some wonderfully evocative guitar in the solo. Indeed the guitar work here is spectacularly well done and adds that extra high to every song.
By the time “Heaven And Earth Collide” arrives we’re into the second half of The Long Road Back, and this is where you start to get a better sense of whether the album really does achieve what Laine set out to do – reconnect with his musical beginnings without ignoring everything he’s learned in the decades since. It’s another slower number, wonderfully constructed and a wonderful reflection on finding love.
“Bad Habit” follows. It’s another with a harder edge to it, and at first play was one that really stood out for me. The beautiful thing about this record though is that my favourites change with every play, and that is always the sign of a really special record. 8 songs in we are edging into ‘album of the year’ territory.
Then we get to “Kiss Me California,” which for me is simply a wonderful title. It creates an image before you’ve even heard a note and immediately suggests something sun-drenched, melodic and perhaps just a little nostalgic. It rides in on some lush keys and has a different edge to it. There’s a real almost Country-tinged, singer songwriter feel and underpinned by string sounds its a real guilty pleasure of a track that has more of a Richard Marx/Rick Price feel. I love it.
As we approach the end, “The Ones That Got Away” feels like a particularly appropriate title for a record called The Long Road Back. It’s another classic, perfectly melodic, wonderfully evocative and a real goose-bump moment. It’s so good it feels like it stepped right of 1989 and into the light of 2026. On a flawless album this is one of the real gems. Melodic Rock never sounded this good or heartfelt.
And finally we arrive at “Now That You Don’t Love Me Anymore.” It’s an intriguing title with which to close a record that’s concerned with looking backwards while simultaneously moving forward. The final song on any album matters, but on an album called The Long Road Back it perhaps carries a little more weight. After eleven songs, this is where Paul chooses to leave us.
Like so may times throughout this record you’re left thinking how can he top that? But the beauty of this collection is that he does again and again. The strings and keys just add weight to the heartbreak. It’s an incredible song – better than the best ballad Bon Jovi ever wrote. On an album studded with wonderful slower songs this is the one that pushes it over the edge.
The Long Road Back is everything you could have hoped for from Paul Laine after all these years, but more importantly it never feels like an exercise in nostalgia. Paul’s voice sounds magnificent, Bruno Ravel and Scotty “Hooch” Taylor give the record a wonderfully solid foundation, and Andrew Oye’s guitar work is exceptional throughout, adding colour and emotion without ever overwhelming the songs.
The production is huge, warm and beautifully suited to music that lives and dies by its melodies, and the remarkable thing is just how difficult it is to pick favourites — “Love Me Or Leave Me,” “Bad Habit,” “Kiss Me California,” “The Ones That Got Away” and the stunning “Now That You Don’t Love Me Anymore” could all stake a claim, and tomorrow I’d probably give you five different songs.
There are echoes of Stick It In Your Ear, naturally, and everything Paul has learned through Danger Danger and those wonderful Defiants records is here too, but ultimately The Long Road Back sounds like neither: it sounds like Paul Laine in 2026, reconnecting with what made us fall in love with his music while bringing thirty-plus years of life along for the ride.
Eleven songs, no filler, huge melodies, wonderful playing and songs that somehow get better with every listen. We’re edging towards the end of the year and I’ve heard plenty of great records, but very few that have made me immediately want to go back to track one every single time they finish.
The Long Road Back isn’t just one of the finest Melodic Rock albums I’ve heard this year — right now it’s the one the rest have to beat.
Ten years after that night in Melbourne – and more than three decades after the journey began – Paul Laine has finally found his way back to where it all started. Welcome back, Paul. You might just have found your way to the Melodic Rock album of the year…
9.5 / 10
