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LOCKHART
City Pulse

High Roller (2026)
Rating: 7.5/10

If ever there was a contemporary example of a time machine glimpsing back to the peak era of sizzling and steamy AOR-driven hard rock, it’s via Canadian band Lockhart. With their debut full-length release, the trio of Devon Kerr (vocals, guitar and keyboards), Jason Junop (bass) and Fabio Alessandrini (drums) provide the sort of nostalgic hazy warmth one would expect from classic poppier rock acts such as Toto and Reo Speedwagon. Soft melodies conjure images of smoky American city skylines, roller skaters gliding on sizzling esplanades and late night radio lights.

Even if you are too young to have lived through 1986, the title track takes you right there; the delicate simmering of the melody and the pomp and fluff. But hey, before you start thinking this isn’t an album worthy of Metal Forces, you are very much mistaken. Lockhart frequently hovers around the hard rock and metal fringes, always flirting with those soft melodies and unintentionally designed layers of cheese. Damn, even the promo video for ‘City Pulse’ makes me wanna slap on my old Miami Vice VHS tapes.

And that’s where City Pulse, as an album, sits. Straddling that fragile line of serious and not so as the dreamy creamy ‘Together As None’ drifts via Def Leppard’s Hysteria (1987) and just about every fluffed up band that walked through the USA corridors of AOR plop. It’s riveting stuff as the keyboards wash over you like silken bed sheets to the timely whir of a ceiling fan combating the summer heat. From the uplifting throb of ‘Just Can’t Wait’ to the pop focused dynamics of ‘Can’t Shake It’ and the sugary waft of closer ‘No Chance In Heaven’, one can literally see the pollen eating on the breeze as electric storms of love build on the boulevards.

Lockhart have genuinely tapped into an era that while still existing, remains firmly embedded in a period when all seemed safe and rich in spite of forever threats of nuclear war. And, as ‘The Dose That Made You Poison’ and ‘You Wouldn’t Know Love’ provide further streams of cool and caramel, for a short moment everything in the world feels okay.

Neil Arnold

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