Mylon LeFevre and his band play a relatively bland, run-of-the-mill keyboard and electric guitar-based pop/rock that has no pretensions of deep thematic investigation or musical innovation. His aim in producing a record is to come up with something catchy and entertaining with wholesome and potentially edifying lyrical content. He is not an enormous musical talent by any measure; just a moderately gifted tenor with a voice like
Don Henley and tastes like
Hall and Oates. This places a considerable burden on his songwriters' ability to come up with sharp, succinct, and memorable hooks. There are a few of those on Crack the Sky. "Love God, Hate Sin," for instance, has a winning simplicity and directness and sports an effective group singalong arrangement. "Closer Than a Heartbeat" plants an even sharper melody in a keyboard tune that could have been substituted for anything on Billboard's Top 40 songs of 1985 without anyone noticing the difference. "I Believe" is a sure-fire Zippo-waver of a ballad. And
LeFevre's power duet with Carole Ford ("For My Growing") has a knockout chorus that would make
Celine Dion green with envy. The rest of the songs, however, have blunter hooks and are more or less entirely forgettable. Crack the Sky offers a few candidates for a
LeFevre greatest-hits compilation, but as an album it's a bit of a dud. ~ Evan Cater