Retro-flavoured Swedes The Night Flight Orchestra (ft. Soilwork, Arch Enemy, Mean Streak members) are still at it with their seventh album Give Us The Moon (Napalm Records). With an insanely catchy AOR style, with an unabashedly high level of seventies and eighties-style cheese front and centre. Half the tracks here sound like they belong in some long-forgotten, coming-of-age film from 1985.  

Their fondness for airports and the world of flight is a constant through their work, with an introductory “Final Call” to board leading into the full-blooded “Stratus” – a pacey rocker with urgent keys, melodramatic lyrics, big chords, and a sumptuous chorus. They might lean too heavily on cliches but damn they know how to make an earworm, the emphatic, fists in the air “Shooting Velvet” is up there with NFO classics like “Josephine” or “White Jeans.” Speaking of such, “Miraculous” is a big and bouncy slice of AOR with lines like “We gaze into the night, longing for the great unknown” and hooks so catchy they should come with a health warning. 

Eighteen years in, you know what they are about by now, a lovingly made mash-up/homage to bands such as Boston, Foreigner, and Survivor with a liberal seasoning of Disco and Funk. The latter two elements are strong in “A Paris Point of View,” with a groovy bass and a foot-tapping, slinky drumbeat reminiscent of “I Was Made For Loving You” by KISS. “Like The Beating Of A Heart” is another disco-infused pop rocker that is lodged in my head, and one that wouldn’t be out of place on Royal Republic’s Lovecop.

“Paloma” is the big, lighter waving power ballad, pulsating synths and gentle guitars swell to a grand, cinematic flourish – it ticks all the requisite boxes but is a rare misstep in an album of hits. The slow-burning charm of “Give Us The Moon,” with its undulating melody, perks things back up a few tracks later. Proceedings are wrapped up in a suitable dramatic fashion, with the progtastic melodic rock of “Stewardess, Empress, Hot Mess (And The Captain of Pain)” – which thunders by with an Avantasia-like fire and brimstone.

The Swedish octet’s seventh record is a glorious paean to AOR, with track after track of top-quality belters encased in a thick coating of cheddar. 

Buy it here:
https://napalmrecordsamerica.com/thenightflightorchestra

8 / 10
THOMAS THROWER
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