by Steve Huey

Long Cold Winter is a transition album for Cinderella, mixing pop-metal tunes with better hooks than those on Night Songs with a newfound penchant for gritty blues-rock à la the Stones or Aerosmith. The ballads -- the grandiose "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)" and the excellent, lower-key "Coming Home" -- are what made the album Cinderella's most commercially successful, but the effective combination of pop hooks and tough, swaggering rock & roll on songs like "Gypsy Road" and "Fallin' Apart at the Seams" prevents the album from becoming simply a vehicle for hit singles and keeps it interesting. Not all of the songs are memorable, but most of them are.