Tragedies of both a genuine and music bizz kind haunt Great White. That Michael Lardie, Audie Desbrow and Mark Kendall are operating at all as an incarnation of the band is tribute to their persistence, if nothing else.
Elation, despite all of the weight of GW history, shows some of the qualities that took them into their substantial heyday.
At their best, Great White made hard rockin’ sound easy, and here they repeat the trick quite handsomely on Love Train, a song that would sit well on an early Whitesnake record, and via a nice, bluesy ballad, Hard To Say Goodbye.
With Jack Russell off fronting (inevitably perhaps) Jack Russell’s Great White, Terry Ilous fills the rasping-throat role with some élan. And while there’s no killer hook of the kind that Great White once had in abundance, there is enough about Elation to realise that they have been musicians of some quality in their day.
