Stephen
CORNERSTONE was building an ambitious link with 'Somewhere In America' that connects three different platforms which are melodic hard rock/AOR, alternative rock, and pop. Not only it contains multi-genres, the sound and vibe is also bridging the 80s / 90s decade with the current era. This various blend reminds me to the Japanese most-famous band, L'ARC-EN-CIEL, where they also mix a lot of different styles into their music and it's effective of gaining a lot of multi-background fans.
'Stay' is a decent opening track, I can think of other better tracks to start the album, but good thing is they build up the momentum with toward the fifth track. 'Breathing For You' is a very smooth poppish ballad, and so is 'Right or Wrong'. The nice riffs that started 'Like A Stranger' promised you that it's going to be an excellent tune, and the heavenly chorus sealed the deal, this is simply the best track of the album.
'Being Unaware' is energetic and joyful, 'High And Low' is also awesome, the rest are quite okay with 'Oblivious' being the weakest here. To sum up their music, I can picture of HEART meets SOUL ASYLUM with probably WILSON PHILIPS touch on some ballads here. Probably not a very accurate description, but you might get the rough idea. Good album !