Reviewed by Tony Cummings

While putting together her debut album 'The Bigger Picture', Missouri-based singer Laura Respondek ended up forming a band, dubbed Adelaide, and in February this year they released the 'Strong + Brave' album. It's powerful hard rock with more than a bit of Evanescence in the overall sound and, on songs like "Deep Waters" and the slower rock ballad "Masquerade", Respondek's haunting, ambient vocals against the guitar riffs and keys work well to give the songs something of an epic feel. Probably the best track on 'Strong + Brave' is another ballad, "Pick Up The Pieces", which starts acoustically before developing into a symphonic hard rock opus. Less successful is the introduction of rapper T-Jones, whose flows on "Chasing Echoes" seem rather out of place on the album. Production throughout is excellent and Adelaide are clearly a well-schooled set of musos. What there isn't, though, is a song here with enough immediacy to get radio play and so I suspect that 'Strong + Brave' will remain a relatively obscure independent release.

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