Review AUTUMN’S CHILD ‘Starflower’

Mikael Erlandsson is no stranger to Swedish AOR. Known from his time with Secret Service, it is mainly the Last Autumn’s Dream albums that helped Erlandsson gain awareness among a larger group of AOR and rock fans both, inside and outside of Sweden. After 14 albums and many years of collaboration, Last Autumn’s Dream came to an end in 2018.

This was also the starting point of Autumn’s Child, Erlandsson’s new band. With Pontus Åkesson, Robban Bäck, Claes Andersson and Magnus Rosen the bandleader found new companions, with whom he now releases a new album.

‘Starflower’ is already the fourth album of Autumn’s Child and contains eleven new songs. The band has maintained the sense for catchy melodies on their latest output. Songs like ‘Welcome to the Show’ show that they are experts in their field. The song gets straight to the heart at the first listen and it’s the positive vibes that carry you away. The same applies to the rocking ‘I Can’t Get Enough’ and also ‘The Final Call’ knows how to satisfy.

Nevertheless, you can’t get rid of the feeling that a lot has been invested in the sense of dressed to success. Especially the cheesy ballad ‘Opera’, but also the uninspired ‘I Can’t Get Enough’ are not the best this genre has ever brought to surface. Especially the latter song is an unsubstantial rocker without bite. Furthermore ‘Love From Tokyo’ has to be mentioned, a song that should have a certain romantic aura, but is rather average and maybe would have fit better into a more standard musical. There is a lot of tearjerking here, which is not bad per se, but somehow doesn’t really evoke emotions.

All in all ‘Starflower’ is a well produced album, which presents standard material. Considering the last releases of bands like Journey, you can see the difference between bands in rock and AOR. ‘Starflower’ offers good AOR off the shelf. Not more but also not less.