New Regime - The Race

It was sealed, and it was cheap, and it followed me home so I got to keep it.

New Regime, stylized as New:Regime was a relatively short lived '80s new wave tinged rock band who released two albums on RCA, their self titled debut in '85 and The Race which was released in '87. Me personally, I don't think I'd heard of them and reading through the credits I can't say I recognized any of the main players. I did recognize Neil Chapman's (Pukka Orchestra) name along with Dalbello under the additional musicians section which did lend a little cred from my perspective.

I had been puttering in the basement, so I figured I'd just put this one and crank it up. Admittedly not the best way to road test a new album but it is what it is. Musically this sort of hit where I thought it would, which was cool. It was very mid '80s and reminded me a lot of Robbie Nevil (only on the first listen, after that it was harder to hear) but you'd be forgiven if you came up with your own "sounds like" list. The music is frankly really generic and could have come just about any competent band. Which is a horrible way of saying this was a decent commercial sounding record that was very much of its time.

You know what?

I like this stuff, and I really like this album. I'm a sucker for this era of processed guitars and slick production.

Frankly there's a more going on here than was apparent on that first cursory listen. If I'm going to shit on a band for being commercial in the '80s I'll need to lump in The Front, Eight Seconds, Platinum Blonde (yes, them too) and a slew of others.

I'm running through the album again from the beginning, this time with no distractions and I have the lyrics and credits in front of me. The album opens with "The Race" (one of the best tracks on the record) and this was a great introduction. The song has a lot of the '80s trappings but it's so good, and vocalist Kevin Connelly nails it. Yes, he has one of those every-man voices, but there's something about his voice, that while familiar, is distinctive too. While I'm partial to the rockers, the band was pretty adept at those mid tempo slow dance songs that were full of emotional angst and soaring vocals and guitar solos. 

All of the songs were keepers which I found interesting and kind of cool. Oh, I'm not saying everything was a single or mix tape worthy, but nothing here made me want to get up and skip a song.

I have to admit that this was a really nice surprise and was a lot of fun. They may not have won the race, but they won me over ... it just took a little longer.