Luley
Today's Tomorrow

Klaus Luley is a name that is rather known in the European leg of the AOR genre, known from his role in bands like Tokyo or Craaft and many collaborations and song writing duties with known artist from all over the globe. Today’s Tomorrow is his first release under his own moniker and that following a long time since he last appeared in any band as a member, probably a longed for release which also features a remake of Tokyo classic Tokyo. The cover art clearly looks fascinating and overall this has the potential to be a good album considering the fact that Tokyo was a rather good band despite the fact them never really managing any outstanding album but there were clearly some good stuff there just not the timeless classic stuff. Maybe Luley can make that when he is on his own, with help from two accomplished musicians on drums and bass.

This is music that is best described as similar to what Toto makes, with a similar keyboard and guitar sound although Klaus has a voice that is dissimilar to any singer of Toto. If you haven’t heard Toto, you are a bit odd but then I can tell you that just like them Luley builds his music around memorable choruses with verses building up to those choruses with a very active keyboard presence creating a very melodic atmosphere to the sound. Something like that you could describe the sound of Luley, you could also point out that this album does not really offer anything new or different to what you have heard before if you are a fan of the genre, it is quite typical in style to AOR/Melodic rock with catchy choruses and a hypermelodic sound that is polished until it isn’t possible to polish it any more. The album consists of eleven tracks of classic AOR sounding songs and it plays for little over 48 minutes.

I think this albums starts brilliantly, the opening track Can’t Live Without You is great, catchy and a treat to listen to. And then comes… nothing to be honest. The rest of the tracks are decent tracks but none of them appeal to me in the scale that the first one does and the fact is that those tracks doesn’t make any sort of impression on me either which sort of a lowest requirement for a good rating. So besides a great opener I have a hard time seeing a point with this album, it is not that I am saying that it is bad but considering how much really good music that sees the light of day every month in the AOR genre it is hard to really motivate a real justification for getting this album, there are just so many better ones that you could look into both from 2011 and from the early goings of this year. I should say though that the remake of the song Tokyo that was originally made by the band Tokyo on the album with the same title is a nice little curiosity, a decent song and maybe not better than the original but cool to hear with a fresh sound. Other than a curiosity and a great opening song though there is not much that keeps me interested with this album.

In the end it is one of those albums, granted it has a fantastic opening tracks that promises so much more but in the end, that is good but nothing more than that and in today’s very overcrowded musical world it feels a bit look good is not really enough anymore. Although I am not saying that it isn’t a good listen.