After All - How High the Moon

After All was a band that seemed so full of promise. They were based in Vancouver, and the members were Scott Acomba on vocals, Jordy Birch on bass and backing vocals, Todd Simko on guitar and backing vocals, and Leigh Grant on drums. To me it always seemed like a big deal when an act was signed to Capitol, although I'm guessing they were licensed from Nettwork but that's just a guess on my part. Being on Nettwork had its own cool factor ... what I'm trying to say is that they had backing behind them.

I did buy the CD when it came out in '88, and even saw them open for Bruce Hornsby at the old Expo Theatre - a great venue, now gone. It was an odd pairing, but they gave it a good go, and I remember rooting for them as I'd just picked up the album and it was cool to see them run through their short set. "Bullets" was getting a little bit of airplay here at home, and I suspect it was a regional thing, but for me it counted. I can't remember if they got a little pop when they played it. I like to think they did, I was cheering if that counts.

It was an unexpected pleasure to find the record. I didn't need it. I wanted it. This was a bit of lost history, and it deserved to be in a collection, not languishing in a bin somewhere, so I took one for the team. I'd not thought of the band in a while, but I was looking forward to taking a trip down memory lane. I thought I'd cheat and listen to it on the way home so I tried to stream it, but the only After All albums I could find were from a very different band. A little digging turned up a reference to the song "Bullets" on a Nettwork collection on Apple Music, the Spotify version doesn't have it at all. The band had been reduced to nothing more than a footnote which is a shame.

So down to the basement I went when I got home, and after giving the album a little spa treatment it was time to sit back and crank the tunes. Right from the opening track "Save Me from Myself" it was like I was listening to an album that reeked of potential. The album mined the alt rock vein that was opened by the likes of R.E.M. and guitarist Todd Simko was a tasty player who could blend an almost Edge-like ethereal tone on his electric and sweeten things with his use of acoustic textures. He would also add just enough slide guitar here and there to give things a little extra tension. Nothing too flashy, but so good.

It was vocalist Scott Acomba who was front and centre in the mix, which is always a good thing. So many records tend to bury the lead vocalist, sometimes with good reason. He also wasn't drowning in reverb and delay. The band was really solid, and it's been fun listening to this again after so long. Me being me, back in the day I was drawn to the radio hits and the songs that immediately jumped out, and the one two punch of "Save Me from Myself" and "Bullets" was pretty compelling. It's not like the rest of the album collapsed under the weight of those songs, though. There are no bad songs here. If anything, time has revealed more than I originally knew was going on. An album that seemed so full of potential somehow never managed to get anywhere, and that's the real shame of those failed expectations. I really enjoyed this.

What I find interesting about this period is how production choices and mixing have changed, and where things have stayed in that sweet spot that feels timeless. The album was produced by John Webster, who is sort of like a human Swiss Army Knife. He's a great keyboard player and his list of performance credits is kind of jaw dropping, but he's got a lot of production credits under his belt too. The ever dependable Mike Fraser served as the album's engineer, and while he mixed a couple of the songs, most of the post production mixing seems to have been done at Phase One by Brian McGee, a name I'm not as familiar with. The drums sound great, and the guitars are crisp without being overly processed. That's kind of a long meanderamble that more or less is my way of saying the production choices here have managed to sound relatively current after more than three decades. Oh make no mistake, this is an '80s album (late '80s, but still the '80s), but one right on the cusp of a huge shift that was around the corner with the '90s.

After All would be a one and done. Who knows what went on, and really after all this time does it even matter? Scott would leave the band, and the other three would soldier on and form the band Pure. I'm not too familiar with them, and what I've heard is pretty standard '90s alt rock band.

They left a lone artifact, and it's one of those albums that sadly remains buried. It's a shame Capitol or Nettwork won't put this up to stream, at this point it just deserves to be preserved.

I read that guitarist Todd Simko had passed away back in 2012. RIP, hell of a player.