Reaction: "Lonely Soldier Boy"

Out of the tubes came Michael Bradley's new CD, "Lonely Soldier Boy" today! If you've been following the craziness, you can appreciate that it's a miracle that this album actually made it out to the public. Fate must have a sense of humour because she would deliver the album shortly after the release of the Shadow Chronicles. For my part, I ordered my copy the moment as soon as it was available. So what does my curiosity get me?

Lonely Soldier Boy is an odd little curio in terms of musical history. It's a remix album ...sort of. Michael Bradley was the mind behind much of the music in Robotech from about half-way through the original run. In this project he's gone back to the source material and rerecorded pretty much everything from the ground up and provided new studio arrangements. For the most part, it turns out rather well too. It doesn't stray too far from source and you basically wind up with a adult-contemporary pop-rock album... I could easily imagine Michael Bradley's ensemble covering the likes of Sting or Savage Garden.

It does however stumble on a few points. Unfortunately no matter how you look at it, the fact remains that these are songs that were written for a cartoon in the 80's. The lyrics and subject matter all point to its origins as a show soundtrack ...almost an opera in its own way. I never really did like the lyrics to We Will Win even back then (Bradley should've left well enough alone; particularly since this wasn't one of his). "In My Heart" and "Lonely Soldier Boy" (the title track) however nails both nostalgia and timelessness. I'd kill to hear these performed live.

On a related note, Michael Bradley takes a risk on the edge of cheesiness with a "live" recording of "It Don't Get Any Better." This had always been an anthem for Robotech and was also "performed live" by his character Lancer in the show. Unfortunately, it feels rather artificial and forced. I think it feels so because this album is a Michael Bradley album and not a Robotech album... You could probably get away with this if you were to believe this was Lancer performing the song for us. But we're 20 years removed and well, it didn't really work for me.

Having well established that we are indeed decades removed from the source however, the decision was thankfully made to include a few of the original demo tapes as bonus tracks. These are the raw pre-production recordings Michael Bradley brought to the execs before they were recorded in their final form as heard on the show. It's a wonderful look back as "what could have been" (for "what actually was" you'd need to track down the Robotech soundtrack, of course). I'm pleased to be able to say that the demos are remarkably well preserved and still sound pretty good as far as a recording from 1985 goes. I'm even more surprised to report that the demos included a few sound-effects dubbed in here and there - a cute touch.

Anyway, enough of me rambling on. Order it for yourself; it's not like it's particularly expensive. Come on now.