April Wine: Greatest Hits

Album Review

Covering its most lucrative years, April Wine's Greatest Hits compiles all of this Montreal-based band's material from the '70s, made up of power ballads and hard rock songs. Founder and lead singer Myles Goodwyn pilots the group in both the slow stuff and the guitar-driven tunes, and his obliging voice takes full control of each type. Both "Roller" and "You Could Have Been a Lady" broke Billboard's Top 40 charts, but this collection has many other redeeming factors, especially in the sock hop innocence of "You Won't Dance With Me" or the coarseness of "Weeping Widow." As pure as guitar rock gets, April Wine's repertoire may have been taken straight out of the rock & roll handbook with run-of- the-mill electric and bass guitar rhythms and a steady drumbeat keeping time all the while, but its energy and exuberance were right up there with bands like Journey and Foreigner, only its popularity wasn't. Gracing many a high school dance were ballads like "I'm on Fire for You Baby" and "Like a Lover, Like a Song," which are still played on Canadian radio every now and then. April Wine has numerous compilations within its catalog, but this set gratifyingly isolates its earliest and best efforts and is also an easy find.