This would have been the perfect time for Toploader to deliver. To record a great album which would silence their critics once and for all. To win over those who wrote them off as a jammy pub band, dad-rock chancers and one hit wonders, to charm those who loathed the endlessly re-released, Jamie Oliver-endorsed 'Dancing In The Moonlight'.
Alas, this follow-up to the 1.5 million selling 'Onka's Big Moka' doesn't quite do it. For, while this decent bunch of affable Eastbourne buddies are fine rock musicians, a great live band and more than capable of penning stirring tunes, they've yet to top the poppiness of '...Moonlight' - a cover version ladies and gentlemen- or the epic, sprawling beauty of 'Achilles' Heel'.
Once again produced by big cheeses George Drakoulias (The Black Crowes) and Dave Eringa (Manic Street Preachers) and recorded in Los Angeles, 'Magic Hotel' takes its name from a notorious LA apartment complex. And while an enjoyable listen, it merely treads water, offering a more mature and mellow alternative to all those jagged, nu-metal or garage rock types around these days.
There are peaks - the joyous Sly Stone stomp of opener and single 'Time Of My Life', the summertime country feel of 'Leave Me Be', the Doorsy organ and swelling chorus of 'Lady Let Me Shine', the folksome flavour of 'Promised Tide' and the epic rock of 'The Midas Touch'.
Elsewhere though, tracks that are robustly produced, expertly played, soulfully sung and tinged with the rootsy sounds of the late Sixties/early Seventies, fall inches short of the mark. Meanwhile, anti nuclear war opus 'Stupid Games', though noble in sentiment, is the album's trough, with its lacklustre mix of The Beatles', Noel Harrison's 'Windmills Of Your Mind' and cringeworthy schoolboy prose.
The album's closer, a cover of 'Some Kind Of Wonderful', is also a tad disappointing as a send off. John Ellison's classic Sixties soul standard, immortalised by Grand Funk Railroad a decade later, is an able yet frustratingly restrained, glam handclapping run through which misses the opportunity for a right royal knees-up.
'Magic Hotel' is not a great album then. But it is a good one. Those who have been scorned for being 'Loader fans will be scorned still, while consoling themselves with a new set of songs to savour. Those who hate the band will have the reasons for their hatred confirmed. Until next time then, it's simply a matter of business as usual.
