Artist: Lynn Allen 
   Title: And The Horse You Rode In On
   Label: Escape Music

Well its been a long time coming but the new release from Billy Peiffer’s band Lynn Allen, ‘And The Horse You Rode In On’ is here, and this time Peiffer has united with Escape Records to round off 2007 in style with a pure slice of great AOR.

Peiffer teams up with old pal Hal Williamson on bass and Mark Dekalb on drums for this new release and the trio bring the whole Lynn Allen sound bang up to date.

Things get underway with ‘I Will If You Will’ and the quality comes shining through from the off, with a sound that is very The Cars meets Men At Work, with the vocals of Peiffer the high point of the track as they come across crystal clear, along with his superb guitar playing.

The album continues along a similar vein with ‘Enough To Make Me Sober’, another great piece of AOR with a certain air of Southern Rock in the mix on this one, then things start heating up a little with the up tempo ‘Warning Shot’.

But one of the tracks of the album for me has to be ‘Leaving Las Vegas’, again that tempo is picked up again but it’s the raw edged guitar sound that really makes this one really stand out from the rest.  That same up-beat style is continued with ‘Michelle’, which is a kind of Southern Ballad with bit of rhythm and blues mixed in for good measure.

Another of my favourite tracks is ‘Would It Hurt You’, again great vocals from Peiffer along with some sterling guitar work, with the every present back-beat of Dekalb and Williamson keeping it all together.

We get a little heavier with the next track ‘Mine’, when I say heavy I mean as heavy as AOR dares, with a more dominant drum beat and some spell binding guitar riffs from Peiffer mid section.

We're really hotting things up now with the excellent ‘What She’s Doin’ and the superb ‘Tonite Is Alright’, before closing the album with the bluesy tones of ‘How Long’, which is the icing on the cake for what is a great no nonsense AOR album of the highest quality and one that will appeal to a vast audience, not just the diehard AOR fan.  What a great way to end 2007!

All content copyright of The Mayfair Mall Zine unless otherwise stated.