Best known for his stint as
Alice Cooper's guitarist in the 1980s,
Kane Roberts is an excellent musician with enviable chops. The axeman isn't a bad singer either, although his own albums for MCA and, later, DGC/Geffen weren't big sellers. Typical of his post-
Cooper output, Saints and Sinners is a decent but not magnificent collection of commercial arena rock. One of his main assets on this slick CD is producer/composer/singer
Desmond Child, who excelled in the late 1970s as leader of the unconventional rock/soul group Desmond Child & Rouge, but didn't become well known until working with
Bon Jovi and others in the 1980s.
Child's help with the songwriting proves valuable on "Rebel Heart," "Wild Nights," "Dance Little Dance," and other glossy numbers along the lines of
Bon Jovi. Saints and Sinners is far from a bad album, but with Child serving as executive producer, Sir Arthur Payson working as producer and Michael Wagener handling the mixing, it should have been great instead of merely decent. ~ Alex Henderson