I was more than a little surprised when I was sent a copy of the new album by Dante Fox as I hadn’t heard from them in years and wasn’t aware that they were still going. Formed by singer Sue Willetts and guitarist Tim Manford in 1989 they released two albums in the Nineties before taking a break, and this is their fourth album since returning to the scene in 2005. Their last album, ‘Breathless’, was only released in 2016 and received great acclaim, so the band have quickly gone back into the studio to re-record songs from their first two albums and released this as ‘Six String Revolver’. This is AOR, with a very strong focus indeed on the vocals of Sue, which are quite stunning. She is like a mix of Nancy Wilson and Cher, and musically the band has been influenced by Heart and Pat Benatar in particular.
I must be honest, I was going to review this album as a middle of the road as the songs aren’t amazing, at least I didn’t think they were. True, the performance and production is fine, the guitar solos are okay without being incredible, but everything rests on Sue’s vocals. If ever a band was a vehicle it must be this one, and her voice just gets into the brain and stays there. The other morning, I was reading the news and a song kept coming into my head, and it took me ages to realise that it was Dante Fox. At that time, I had played the album just once, yet “Firing My Heart” was already stuck in my head. The more I listened, the more songs that stayed with me, such as “A Matter of Time”, which has an incredible vocal performance.
In many ways, this is a quite a simple album, but the vocals take it onto a whole different level and on that basis if nothing else, I know that I will be returning to this time and again.
