When I received the new The Sign album in my mailbox, I found out that the record company also had sent me Mark Mangold’s album Lift. This surprised me because this album was already released in 2002 and because I wouldn’t qualify Lift as being rock, more sing a song pop, reminiscent of a more melodic Mark Cohen. Therefore I will keep this review short. The link between Mark and The Sign was easy to make, Mark plays keyboards in this excellent band and also produced their latest product called The Second Coming. Lift is Mark’s solo project and I must say that this declined my expectations for the album since I’m usually not a big fan of keyboard players’ solo albums. Luckily Mark gathered quite some musicians to play on his album, I counted seventeen among whom three drummers, nine background singers, a flutist and a bagpipe player. The diversity of musicians resulted in a wide range of sounds without breaking up the album thanks to the brilliant melodies and the impressive vocals of Mark himself.

A great surplus value is the fine background vocals by the nine headed army of vocalists. There are too many albums where the background singers are used as fillers but here they play a major role in setting the atmosphere. The classic rock instruments like drums and guitars, in general play an additional role on the album, but there are some couplets where they come to the surface and give the proper edge to the melodic tracks. The major parts of the album are of course - never dominating - keyboards (usually piano) and vocals. I could go on, but since I promised to keep this review short, I’ll end by telling you that if you’re into melodies carried by piano and vocals you should definitely check this one out. Since this site is about rock I won’t bother rating this album, if I were writing for a pop/melodic magazine this album would be rated at least 9 out of the 10 points. I absolutely love it!