AFTER YOU – Original Studio Recording (Broadway Records)
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
When I started listening to this album I thought the first two tracks were going to be the opening to something quite different and interesting. However, as the album progressed it all seemed to blur into one very long, melancholy, ponderous piece.
After You is a new musical, written by Alex Parker and Katie Lam, following a romantic encounter on a cruise liner and stars Alexia Khadime and Bradley Jaden. I can imagine this making a charming hour in a small theatre venue where you may get more visual stimulation but the recording does tend to get repetitive with slow, emotional ballads.
Luckily, there is a booklet with the album which explains the outline of the piece. Basically, two characters who share a drink on an ocean liner to New York. “He’s looking for fun and adventure, and she’s just trying to keep her head down, when a chance encounter gives rise to an unlikely companionship.”
Khadime and Jaden do the best with the material and, taken singly, the tracks are quite sweet but put together as a whole, to me, it all just seemed too flat.
Tracks are: ‘Better’, ‘First Drink’, ‘Easy’, ‘Constellations’, ‘Touch Me’, ‘Easy (reprise)’, ‘Voice Inside My Head’, ‘See the World’ and ‘After You’.
I think this is probably one of those shows you have to take in visually and, after having done so, the recording will make more sense and bring back memories of the performance. However, as a stand-alone album I just could not get into it at all.
Nick Wakeham
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