The Shadows - Moonlight Shadows (CD)

All Music Guide

The Shadows first trip to the top 10 of the album charts for seven years since the golden days of their late 1970s revival and Moonlight Shadows was designed for the generation who preferred their music uncomplicated and easy. Despite the accepted brilliance of Hank Marvin in getting a very distinctive sound out of his instrument, here was an album with 16 tracks of contemporary hits ranging from the very recent (at the time of its release) Every Breath You Take, Hello, Against All Odds, I Just Called To Say I Love You, back to the 1960s songs Hey Jude,A Whiter Shade Of Pale and Nights In White Shade, all played with the minimum of effort (don't the great ones always make it seem easy) by Hank on the guitar with his trademark reverb effect, backed by the unobtrusive rhythm section. Market an album such as this with prime time TV advertising aimed not at Shadows fans, for by the mid 1980s they were a little thin on the ground, but at a mass market of easy listening, late night, after th...e dinner party crowd, and Polydor had a winner. Not that this would thrust The Shadows back in to the limelight, it would be another four years before they another top 10 album, (Reflection) backed by a very similar campaign but this was the beginning of a trend by most of the record companies who had exhausted their supply of artists to promote greatest hits albums, and would concentrate on TV advertising relatively anonymous instrumental recordings of saxophones, pan pipes and harps to supplement their mainstream artists product. - Sharon Mawer, All Music Guide Read more Less