Michael Kratz – ‘TAFKATNO’

(Art Of Melody)

West Coast artist Michael Kratz returns with ‘TAFKATNO’ and I was eagerly anticipating this one dropping after his impressive ‘Live Your Life’ album really ignited my interest in the musician’s work. Maybe it’s my own high expectations of what to expect but I’m far less impressed with ‘TAFKATNO’ than I was expecting to be. Don’t get me wrong its still an enjoyable album and there is lots I like about it, but its one of those albums that is fifty/fifty for me – for every positive I could mention a negative.

‘TAFKATNO’ is essentially a West Coast album but something that struck me on opener ‘Too Close To The Edge’ was a vibe that reminded me of Talking Heads and throughout the album I kept feeling that experimental Eighties pop vibe. On this album Kratz is never scared to experiment and toy with his songs. Perhaps this progressive approach to his songs is one of the reasons the album fails to resonate with me as much as I would have liked. Early AOR always did have Prog tones so I shouldn’t be surprised at Kratz dipping his toes into that style of song writing.

It’s a very atmospheric album and that its certainly one of the things I enjoyed about it and I also really like Kratz’s voice and its warmth which really hooks me in. His voice and tone certainly suit this style of Soft Rock to a T! I fear the album misses out on having a few more killer choruses which would have made the album more solid and more outstanding but I don’t think Kratz was going for a quick fix album. It is definitely an album best enjoyed as a whole as opposed to cherry picking personal highlights out of when listening.

A highlight for me is the ballad ‘Let’s Do Something Good’ which has a great positivity to it. It’s a beautiful song with warm vocals from Kratz which really drew me in and made it a real stand out track.

It’s rare to hear albums in this vein of West Coast nowadays so although I’ve been a bit picky about it, I can certainly highly recommend it to genre fans who will I’m sure find enough pleasure from ‘TAFKATNO’ to make it money well spent, even if it doesn’t reach the heights of West Coast classics of the past!

6/10

Essential Track - 'Let's Do Something Good'

Review by Woody