Stardust - 'Highway to Heartbreak'

They’ve had some heavyweight assistance from Mark Spiro and Tommy Denander with the writing and production and their added class shows. “Runaway” is a perky start and you’ll hear traces of Def Lep, Journey and maybe early-Jovi in their style with the keyboards featuring prominently. There’s a sexy video for the sultry “2nd Hand Love” which some of you boys and girls might only need one hand to fully enjoy while “Shout It Out Loud” features a chanted chorus and benefits from a dark video which takes you to bed, bath and beyond.

It’s always interesting to hear a cover version with a sex-swap vocal and on “Heartbreaker” Adam Stewart puts his twist on Ms Pat Benatar’s 1979 classic. I suspect the band members are all experienced players and each of them performs admirably. It seems that they have adopted anglicised names for stage purposes and in fact there is absolutely nothing on the album that would indicate they are an Eastern European band. Listen to “Blue Jeans Eyes”, the mid-paced Leppard-esque “Can’t Stop Loving You” and especially the small-town girl story of the closer “The River is Rollin” and you can tell it’s ‘Hello America’ time.

Good luck to them – the songs have melody, class and hooks galore and that should be enough to take them far. And well done to Frontiers for expanding our musical borders to discover talent from yet another country (and by 'country', we mean a sovereign state that's a member of the UN in its own right, of course). Where next? Tuvalu?

 

Stardust are;

Adam Stewart (lead vocals)

Tim Keeley (drums)

Facey (lead guitar and vocals)

Dave Legrand (keyboard)

Ben Martin (bass and vocals)