MICHAEL BREEN is singing and playing most of the instruments on his debut from 1987. The CD contains 10 tracks and worth mentioning is that on backing vocals we can hear a girl called SASS JORDAN, who at that time had not released any album and was very unknown. She has become more famous than this Michael Breen guy in fact.

Anyway, musically the only (???) CD of MICHAEL BREEN starts quite boring and poppy. Opener "Rain" is nothing more than a worthless keyboard dominated poprocker. The next track "Risky" is a little better and moves more into the calmer AOR of RUSS IRWIN. Next track "High and low" is pure pop and when listening to the following track "SOS Emotion" (average poprocker), you might think that this album leads to nowhere.

But then happily, MICHAEL BREEN moves and stays into AOR territory for almost the rest of the whole album. "How will I know" has some great keys and is a good AOR Ballad. "So long" is a very relaxing late-night semi AOR Ballad that reminds me somehow of a mixture between BERNIE LABARGE and the RIO album 'Borderland' (great AOR album by the way).

Next track "Face to face" is some great piece of midtempo pure AOR like KYLE VINCENT ('On a night like this') and 80s JOHN WAITE. Then "Do it" is just a nice poprocker like BRIAN SPENCE used to sing us. The last interesting track is "All the way" which starts not really like an AOR song, but the chorus is really great AOR 'All the way' and reminds me of ROBERT TEPPER. Closing track is a reprise of "How will I know".

Concluded, the album starts a bit boring and very pop/rock based, but later on the CD the AOR is taking over. Still I would recommend this CD to the fans of a bit calmer AOR/Poprock with a lot of keys and a similar sound to guys like (let's say) RUSS IRWIN, RUSSELL HITCHCOCK and RICHARD MARX.

You can get a copy of te CD by contacting Robert Pancur from TARGET RECORDS at the following e-mail address: Pancur@pfaffenwinkel.de
 

(Points: 7.5 out of 10)