Cinderella-Still Climbing, 1994

I did it again, that's right I underestimated yet another Cinderella album. It was late in 1994 when this was released. Hard rock like this was way out of fashion by that point and it had been four years since Cinderella's last album. There is no band logo on the cover, they had a session drummer and yet it may just be their second best album next to 1988's Long Cold Winter. They made no attempt to try and make their sound current and applaud them for it. It's another blues based hard rock effort and what an effort it is. There is no doubt in my mind that they were one of the best hard rock bands between the mid 80's and the mid 90's. The playing is solid, Tom Keifer's vocals are rough (as they should be) and most of all the writing is fantastic. In some ways this album almost comes across as a combination of the styles presented in the previous three albums. It has the hard rock simplicity of Night Songs, the catchy hooks of Long Cold winter and some of the blues licks of Heartbreak Station. What this album brings that's new is just the ease with which the band goes through the tracks and the attention to detail. It's a shame that this style of music was gone then and that the album was ignored because it is surprisingly strong. Cinderella have been so unfairly lumped in as a hair metal band. There were a lot of cheesy metal and hard rock bands out there. Yet these guys were one of the shining examples of just a great rock band whose songs speak for themselves. Hopefully a label like hair band won't tarnish the great music they made in just four albums. Truly a band for hard rock fans to be proud of. I really do think of their material in a similar way that I think of the Rolling Stones in the late 60's to early 70's and Aerosmith in the mid 70's. Favorite tracks here include Talk is cheap, Hard to find the words, the title track, Through the rain and Easy come, easy go.