Def Leppard Album: “Songs from the Sparkle Lounge”

After X, I began to accept that we would never hear Lep rock quite like they did in the Pyomania Days. Sure, X had a couple rocking tracks like Cry and Scar, but mostly the songs were poppy and some that I don't care for at all that could've been written by Matchbox 20. Even Euphoria, which rocked fairly hard, tried to be too much like Hysteria.

I think Sparkle Lounge (despite the fairly lame album title) is the album that Def Leppard fans like me have been waiting for. It rocks. The last time I've heard so many rocking Lep tracks in one album was in Retro-Active, and half of those were covers. This just may be their hardest rocking outing since Pyro. And the band is in top form. Joe sounds fantastic, as always. It's amazing that after all these years he hasn't lost his range. The guitar work from Phil and Vivian is great. There are some good, memorable riffs on nearly every track, which is something X was missing. The production value is great as well.

I was hooked from Go. It is one of the best Def Lep tracks I've ever heard. I can't quite compare it to any other song of theirs, though I've tried. If I had to choose, I'd say it sounds a bit like something on Retroactive, like Desert Song combined with Ring of Fire. But it's fast, has a nice dark tone to it and it's heavy! I've never heard a song like Go from the band before and I love it.

The Single Nine Lives is good too, even being co-written by Tim Mcgraw. Luckily it's not a country song. It rocks and reminds me a bit of Armageddon It, though of course not as classic. Other tracks here are good too. C'mon C'mon has a nice pop-rock feel to it. Love is the only ballad on the album and it's a very different Lep ballad, with acoustic guitar parts that sound like Battle for Evermore from Zeppelin and some Queen-style choruses. And Bad Actress must be what's drawing the AC/DC comparison, and it's also a different track for them. There are a few songs that I don't care for as much as others (Hallucinate is okay, but sounds like a Euphoria leftover) but there's nothing here that's throw-away and the album is listenable through and through. And one of the best things is that for the most part, everything here is different from what we've heard before, though the album still remains Def Leppard.

For those who've complained that this band hasn't rocked in a long time, this may be the album you've been looking for.

I'm a longtime Lep fan, since the early '80s and High & Dry. I've never grown tired of their music, and one of their discs is always in the CD player. We all love some work more than others - I never got attached to "Slang", and thought some songs should have gotten more airplay than they did, such as "Promises" which is still a favorite, and "Everyday" off the X album which I liked much more than the rest of the world - but like many other people I figured their days of releasing relevant original-material studio albums were likely passed. I was ok with that, knowing they're still frequent-tourers, and I've now seen them 6 times (3 times in the last 2 years, in fact). So I wasn't expecting this album at all. Wow, what a fantastic and welcome surprise.

"Sparkle Lounge" didn't grab me the first few times I played it through. Maybe it's just me, but it always takes some time to absorb what I'm hearing. The same may happen to you. On the 4th listen, I became absolutely positively hooked. First of all, the production quality is SUPERB. My first listen was on a pair of small computer speakers - what a waste. When I played it on a full system, it absolutely rocked. When I say production quality, I'm not talking about the songs, or the lyrics, I'm talking about the behind-the-scenes engineering of the recording. It's the cleanest, purest, and most sonically crisp recording since Green Day's "American Idiot", which is also a production masterpiece.

And I never thought I'd hear Def Lep with so much diversity. I thought I'd dislike the slight country flavor of Nine Lives, but it actually works very well. I distinctly hear the Beatles and Gary Glitter in "C'mon C'mon", and the Beatles again in "Only the Good Die Young". And whether you like or dislike "Love", and the idea of ballads in general, I love the Queen influence in the song - it's got Bohemian Rhapsody all over it. And in "Gotta Let It Go", the chorus reminds me of Bon Jovi, and their hit "Have a Nice Day", with the huge power chords and pounding percussion. Again, whether you like or dislike Bon Jovi, that's not something I expected from Def Lep.

The entire album is paced well, it's sequenced perfectly, and it's never boring. But you want to know what the real litmus test was? By the end of the 4th listen, I realized I was "dancing" around my place of work, playing air guitar and air drums, as I listened to the CD. Isn't that really what it's about, and what matters? I'm actually rocking out to a brand new Def Leppard album. Yes...it's 2008, and I'm rocking out to a Def Leppard album, and it's not called Hysteria or Pyromania!

I'm sure they worked like dogs to make it as good as it is. As a fan, I'm proud of them, and they should be very proud of themselves. As if their catalog of great music wasn't already large enough, they just added another winner to their history. Congratulations to Def Leppard, I'll see you on tour again very soon.

When I received Sparkle Lounge I decided I was going to "live with it" for a while before deciding what I thought. Well, I've been listening to it for a couple of weeks alongside their greatest hits package(Rock Of Ages) to see how it stacks up to material throughout their career and I think this is their best effort from start to finish since Hysteria.

What I genuinely like about this album is the variety of songs on it. There are songs that remind me of OTTN and High & Dry(Hallucinate and Gotta Let It Go), one's that could easily have been on Pyromania or Hysteria(Nine Lives, Tomorrow and Bad Actress) and some that are better than some of those on Slang or X(Go, Love and Come Undone). They also give a salute to the music they grew up listening to - C'Mon C'Mon and Only The Good Die Young definitely have a 70's feel to them.

Some people have always wanted Def Leppard to make another High & Dry, others would love to see "Hysteria 2" while others think Slang is the pinnacle of their recordings. Well, the reason people have those opinions is that Leppard had, and still HAS, the talent to make those albums and Songs From The Sparkle Lounge hits on everything that's great about the band. Fans of the band or anyone just looking for a good, fun rock and roll album should definitely pick this one up.

I haven't enjoyed a Def album more since Retroactive. Solid percussion coupled with the fun guitar riffs and the trademark harmonizing makes it a really exciting release. The songs "Go" and "C'mon, C'mon" are catchy enough to justify buying the album. Definitely release candidates. Lots of good stuff to be found throughout. Thanks guys!

In the days prior to the release of this album, I noticed that many of the early reviews said the album was just OK. But make no mistake about it, "Songs From the Sparkle Lounge" is much better than that. At first listen, with the jarring opening track "Go," which is a mix of the "Slang" sound and the "Hysteria" sound, it becomes apparent that the guitars are back in full swing. Other tracks keep the energy level at its highest in years while supplying classic Leppard hooks ("Bad Actress"), and a few tracks stand out as smashes in the waiting. "Only the Good Die Young" is the catchiest Def Leppard song since "Promises." There is only one true ballad on the disc, "Love," which doesn't catch on immediately, but this record is not about the ballads. It is about the fact that this band needed a guitar-driven, energetic release to follow up the band's excellent 2006 covers album "Yeah!" They have accomplished that here, and Joe Elliot's vocals are better than ever, showing no signs of age. This body of songs will add to the live shows; they now have some brand new legitimate hard rock songs to stand along side their past classic hits, and while each and every track is not "Photograph" material, there is much to love here, and it proves that Def Leppard is very much a vital rock band in today's market, and there are several tracks here which may give the band its first huge hit in quite some time.