CD Review: Rio - Borderland (1985)

Tracklisting:

I don't wanna be the fool

Straight to the heart

Tommy can't help it

Better this time

State Of Emergency

Shy Girl

She's a virgin

Close to you

Borderland

Personnel:

Jon Neil: Vocals/guitar

Steve Rodford - Drums/bass/keyboards

 Some bands really don't do themselves any favours. AOR hopefuls Rio regularly show up in lists of Crap Album Covers, thanks to the spectacularly tacky cover for second LP "Sex Crimes", and having a song on this album  entitled "She's a virgin" is bad enough until you hear it and realise the general gist is "She's a virgin...and I'm going to be first!" Even in the 80s that was just a wee bit wrong.

  There were a few other things working against them. Being British for starters. There were plenty of UK contenders that were producing the sort of radio-friendly, perfect-for-film-soundtracks, AOR that was all over the 80s but who never got beyond "Cult favourite" Why? No idea. It certainly wasn't for lack of talent...

 This particular LP I originally picked in 1989ish, doggedly hung onto it through several moves and then  finally got round to getting on CD this week.   I think you can take it as read that I quite like it.

 The Rio sound is on the poppier side of AOR - relatively restrained guitars, big choruses and lots of keyboards - and both chaps clearly know what they are doing with their instruments. Jon Neil isn't really in the same class as Lou Gramm or Steve Perry but he gets the job done more than adequately.

 The two strongest tracks on the CD are the opening duo of "I don't wanna be the fool" and "Straight to the heart" but listening to the album again, I'm pleasantly reminded of how good the rest of the songs are. Certainly a lot rockier than memory would have it.  I have "State of emergency" playing as I write this and the solo is pretty tasty. 

 Seriously, these guys should have been on at least one Teen comedy soundtrack. 

 There is one glaring fault with this Krescendo Records reissue though. Thanks to somebody inadvertantly adding "Casualty"(B-side to the "I don't wanna be the fool" single) in the wrong place the tracklisting is all to cock from #6 onwards. ("Shy girl" is really "Casualty", "She's a virgin" is really "Shy girl" and so on down, meaning the title track gets left off entirely!) Good job guys. You might want to get the Retrospect Records reissue instead. 

 Anyway, here's "Straight to the heart". See what you think.