HIGH HOPES
Nodding to some big-name classic rockers but not just copying, they’re on the right track.
TEMPT SOUND LIKE all your favourite high-charting hard-rocking bands from the 80s, but retooled for the Tik-Tok generation. On the young New Yorkers’ irresistible self-titled album, catchy single Roses harks back to Slippery-era Bon Jovi. On Camouflage, Hideaway and throughout they wear their love for Def Leppard proudly. Their hook-up with Dorothy, Living Dangerous, could be Foreigner’s Hot Blooded produced by Mutt Lange, who is one of their producer heroes.
“Classic rock’s in our DNA,” guitarist Harrison Marcello explains, “but we don’t want to just recreate what we love about it. We want to bring a fresher, newer sound, where the melody’s still strong and the guitar still has the hooks, but it’s palatable and fun for younger audiences. When we hang out with friends we’re hearing all this new stuff all the time – R&B, rap, alternative rock – that we want to incorporate into our sound, because we love it.”
So while Tempt’s ear-candy album opener Girl ends up like The Cars on 11, it comes on a lush wash of synthwave. Golden Tongue and Welcome Me In have bass-heavy R&B funk in with the rock crunch. With shades of everyone from Loverboy to The Killers to The Weeknd, this is proper, life-affirming, 21st-century stuff: Gen-X songwriting muscle, Gen-Z production head.
A decade ago, vocalist Zach Allen was a high-schooler working on music with Jon Bon Jovi’s old bandmate, songwriter/producer Jack Ponti, who told Allen he needed his Page, his Perry, his Glimmer Twin. Marcello was studying classical composition in Boston at the time, and when Allen stumbled upon a YouTube video of him shredding away in his dorm room, he made contact. Tempt’s debut album Runaway was released in 2016, and caught the acute ear of much-missed rock journalist Malco
