Elephant. The New Shining

Life is full of surprises and often it becomes intrinsically better because of them. One surprise was the announcement of a new The New Shining album, the second that it dropped on my doormat recently, the final surprise was the extremely high quality of the music on the album.

The New Shining? Truth be told, I had all but forgotten about the band. The last time I played the previous album must have about five years ago. There are so many albums coming by that it is hard to keep up, let alone develop a true relationship with most of these albums. Only truly exceptional albums get to that level and get to compete with the favourites of old.

Like Johan The New Shining is a band that plays its music when singer, guitarist and songwriter 'Nax' Stok is able to do so. The elephant in the title is the elephant in the room called mental illness that needs to be more out in the open and openly discussed. Something Stok contributes actively to, in word and in the lyrics of Elephant.

The music and songs on Elephant is what it truly is about. I will not go as far to write that Elephant blew me away. For that the music is too clean. Apart from that almost all songs are of an extreme beauty. Melodically strong, well played, beautifully arranged, with nice and several memorable vocal melodies. Each individual song has that star quality of well worked out songs. Again a Dutch band comes up with a great album.

As I wrote Elephant is a clean album because of the well cared for arrangements. Nice synths are added to the sound, the guitars sound clean. They colour nicely between the lines. As such the music reminds me of the likes of Whitesnake or Vandenberg, with a major difference, I did not like those bands. The songwriting here is better, simply because The New Shining is not trying to be tougher than it is. The pop feeling is allowed to come in. Not unlike Aha, Saybia or Tim Christensen The New Shining blends rock with a smooth pop feel, but without resorting to the balladry the three Scandinavian bands are also famous for. The result is an album that remains more uptempo and solid.

There you have the reason I like Elephant so much. The New Shining has found a middle ground between blow wave, spandex 80s rock and sweet pop balladry. Like rolling well-developed biceps in soft silk shirts. Nax makes me extremely happy with the music he presents with his bandmates Arjan Nijman en Roel van der Sluis. Elephant is another album released in 2019 that causes my appreciation for the year to rise a little more once again. One of the better albums reviewed in the past weeks and some great ones have come by.

Wo.

You can buy Elephant here:

https://the-new-shining.myonline.store/en_GB/


or listen to our Spotify Playlist to find out what we are writing about:

https://open.spotify.com/user/glazu53/playlist/6R9FgPd2btrMuMaIrYeCh6?si=KI6LzLaAS5K-wsez5oSO2g