One of my favourite pastimes whilst reviewing albums is to guess the musical influence and it wasn’t a particular challenge to work out that Kyle Alden likes to look back towards such purveyors of soft rock as the Eagles, Bread and perhaps even Jackson Browne.
However, there was always more to American soft rock than Mr Alden can bring to his album “Hello Again Kind Stranger” for even when he hits form,as with “Hollywood Sign” or “Pay No Mind”, the listener is left unconvinced as the musicianship is too often leaden, even awkward, and Mr Alden’s voice lacks any particular distinctiveness or style.
“Hello Again Kind Stranger” is, unfortunately, one of those albums that words like inoffensive and innocuous were created to describe.