And now, in a total knee-jerk reaction and over-the-top response to everyone who hated my latest contribution to Rez's weekly mixtape... 
Been a while since I hit this feature, but then in fairness it's been a while since I heard an album that just totally blew me away in the most unexpected fashion. Now, in the last few months I've heard two, the other of which has been featured in "Bitesize" but will appear here eventually, but that will have to be put on ice for the moment, as today I want to talk about this one. First I need to pay appropriate tribute and thanks to the mighty Anteater, without whom I would like as not never have heard this album, even though I'm a fan of the band. It was only when he suggested it for that week's selection in our Prog Rock Album Club that I got to hear it. Now, up to then, I'd be listening to the various albums proposed by our members with something approaching a sense of inevitability and pragmatism; I knew I had to listen to the albums in order to give my opinion, and I would, but not quite with bad grace but with a certain "here-we-go-then-let's-get-this-over-with" mentality. I was looking on it as a task, something that had to be done rather than something I was looking forward to doing. That all changed when I heard this album.
For the first time ever, I made a decision having heard only two tracks, stopped the playback of the file I had and went to buy the album in its entireity, knowing that it was going to be one I would be listening to over and over again. Once I had it I informed the guys in the PRAC that they would, after all, have to wait another while for my review, as I now wanted to completely immerse myself in this album in order to provide the proper viewpoint on it. Prior to that, I had just been going to listen to it the once and give my thoughts, but so impressed was I by even the first two tracks that I felt I could no longer do that. This album deserved to be listened to in detail, many times, before any pronouncement of how great it was could be written. It delayed my contribution to the club, but it was definitely worth it.
The tall ships --- It Bites --- 2008 (The It Bites Music Partnership)
First, a little backstory. For those of you who have not read my journal from the start, It Bites were a band I got into after hearing the hit single "Calling all the heroes" --- before it was a hit --- and realising this was something really special. I was proved correct of course, but on buying their debut album, the oddly-titled "The big lad in the windmill", I was crushed. That one song apart (as I remember it at least; been a while since I listened to the album) it was a huge disappointment, and I remember songs like "All in red" and "Whole new world" failing to impress me. Back in those days, had I had my journal it probably would have found itself at home in the "Nice song --- shame about the album!" slot. But their followup album changed all that, and "Once around the world" was a massive step forward for the band, easily becoming one of my favourite progressive rock albums of that period. Mind you, the third album, "Eat me in St. Louis" didn't do it for me either, though I suspect that should I relisten to it now I might be more forgiving towards it.
This, then, is their fourth album, and somehow I just never got around to getting it. I did buy "Map of the past", gave it one quick listen but even now couldn't tell you if I liked it or not --- it's due a respin very soon --- and really, that's the sum total studio output (other than compilations) of a band that has been going since the late eighties: five albums. Doesn't really seem much, does it? But then, when you look deeper into It Bites' history you can see why. After becoming dissatisfied with the overly progressive direction of the band, especially on "Once around the world", Francis Dunnery, lead singer and guitarist, was so at odds with the rest of the band that he left, and in the wake of his departure It Bites went through two namechanges, seeking to change also their music approach but nothing worked and they split up in 1990. After failed attempts at a reunion with Dunnery they decided to ditch him altogether, as he was not prepared to commit himself to the new lineup, and John Mitchell, who had played with some of the guys in Kino, was drafted in. Thus began the renaissance of It Bites, and this was the first album put out under the new lineup.
It opens weirdly enough, to be fair, on a sort of mutil-vocal line accompanied by a descending synth line, the vocal rising with the keys until percussion and hard guitar punch in and "Oh my God" gets going with a real sense of "Yellow Christian" from "Once around the world". As the song settles into a sort of mid-paced groove, John Mitchell takes the main vocal and you can hear how competent he is and how worthy a successor to Dunnery, though his voice is a little more gravelly than his predecessor. It Bites have always straddled that precarious chasm between rock and pop, with many of their songs very radio-friendly, leading to their own desciption of their music as "progressive pop". To my mind they're the only one in that subgenre. The band certainly sound happy to be back together, John Beck clearly enjoying himself on the again prog-sounding keys, while Mitchell takes both vocal and guitar duties: it was in Arena that he made his real mark, and as a guitarist, but now it's clear he's one hell of a vocalist too. Not only that, but he writes or co-writes most of the songs too.
Everything kicks up into full gear then for "Ghosts", with a great catchy keyboard line from Beck complementing Mitchell's harder guitar work, and it fairly crackles and fizzes with energy. Mitchell's vocal here is a little more urgent and perhaps a tiny bit laboured, the song sounding somewhat personal to him, but again it's a song you could hear on the radio with no trouble at all. Nice little jangly guitar break in the middle, with Beck's keys moaning like the spirits of the title before it all takes off again, and perhaps when Mitchell sings
"The past is behind me" there's a message there for the fans of It Bites. Great screaming guitar solo and the song builds up to a real crescendo with an abrupt sudden end taking us into "Playground", the first ballad with an opening right out of the title track to "Once around the world", a sort of waltzy rhythm pervading the song, a sense of drama and power about it, with Mitchell wringing every ounce of emotion out of the song; big heavy keyboard passages from John Beck add to the both oppressive and liberating atmosphere of the track. The additon of children laughing and playing on the recording is nothing new --- Supertramp were doing this in 1974 --- but it still works.
Despite what I might have thought when perusing the tracklisting, and given their association with the mid-to-late eighties progressive rock scene, "Memory of water" is not a cover of the Marillion track from "Radiation", but is instead a big heavy power rocker with a killer hook built on a superb vocal harmony and some sublime keyboard work from John Beck. It rocks along at a fine pace, some great guitar but much of it relies on the keys, which switch from organ to piano to synth with fluid ease. There is however a wonderful guitar solo from Mitchell near the end, then we're into the standout, which is also the title track. With an incredibly romantic, fantasy element in the lyric, which is freely interpretable however you want to, it seems to be a conversation between two people, one of whom has settled in a foreign country but knows one day he will return home. With a soaring guitar opening it settles into a soft mid-paced, almost balladic sound, with an impassioned vocal from Mitchell, and again the kind of hook many bands would give their eyeteeth for. Fanfare keyboards from Beck overlay an air of grandeur on proceedings, with powerful, almost stately drumming from Bob Dalton. He in fact has intimated the song is about dying, "going home on the tall ships", but as I say you can interpret the lyric how you like: it could even be about an alien stranded on Earth who falls for a human woman and waits to be rescued. The chances of him staying are pretty slim, as the lyric declares
"When the time has come/ For me to go/ I will try to make you see".
It's just an amazing song, and definitely for me marks the high point of the album, with even some celtic sounding whistling sounds on the keys from Beck adding an almost Irish lilt to it, but what is more amazing that usually I find on albums once you get to the best track it delineates the "comedown point", as in, from here on in the songs get weaker, and nothing really measures back up to the greatness of that track. This album, though, doesn't flag for one moment, and where you would normally expect a fairly poor song to follow such a classic, that simply doesn't happen, as "The wind that shakes the barley", an eight-minute monster, keeps the quality top notch. Opening on a bouncy organ intro from Beck, the song pounds along with a good degree of heaviness, bringing in that old vocal harmony style that It Bites made their trademark, then falling away on the back of some introspective guitar and slowing right down before bumping right back up again, this time on the vehicle of Beck's trumpeting keyboards. Again, the song title comes from a Marillion one, but then, they took that from a movie I think, perhaps a poem, and it's pure coincidence, as this song is an original.
The one thing that did strike me as odd about it though is the phrasing in the lyric, which reminds me very much of the way a-ha sing "The blood that moves the body". It's not anything like that song, but the chorus does sail very close to it. Now the vocoder rides in, taking the song in a more "Calling all the heroes" direction, and, uh, we're only halfway through it! Another fine solo from John Mitchell brings the song well into its fifth minute, backed by Beck's almost speaking keys, then for the last two minutes or so it basically returns to the original theme, Mitchell's voice almost cracking with emotion and power. Most poppy of all on the album is "Great disaster", which utilises that other old trick this band made their own, the idea of making up sounds and singing almost nonsense, not quite vocalise, but nothing that makes any sense, with the opening line being
"Dumbry-umbry-ayo! Oh-wo-ho-ho!" which then forms a sort of backdrop to the actual lyric. The song is a boppy, uptempo, kind of silly little pop song, but whereas another band could have made this indeed into what the title declares, I believe that the sense of fun and passion that It Bites have keeps it within the realms of high quality. In fairness, if there is a point where the album could be seen to dip ---
if! --- then this would be it. But I still see it as a good track, very catchy and different, and though it wouldn't appear in my top three on this album, it certainly doesn't merit being skipped or anything like that.
Starting on a quiet digital piano line and soft vocal, "Fahrenheit" becomes another mid-paced rocker with a chiming keyboard sound almost repeating like a kind of bell and some U2-like guitar, another great hook in the chorus and a pitch-perfect vocal performance from John Mitchell. Slick little guitar solo and a softly thumping bassline complements the measured drumming of Dalton, and it's really another winner, as you wait, almost expect, for the quality to slide in one bad track at least, but it never does. I've listened to this album at least twenty times now --- many of those consecutive --- and I know it back to front. There's not one track on it I don't like, not one that I think should not be there. It really does just get better as it goes along. Another beautiful ballad, very well placed as the last one was near the beginning of the album, "For safekeeping" has its bitter side, as Mitchell sings of the power of words, as indeed he did in the opener, and reflects on how a casual sentence or remark can have a much more devastating effect than perhaps was intended or expected. A lovely piano line from Beck leads the song in, with Mitchell's vocal almost stilted in the beginning, and for almost the first two minutes of the song it's keyboard that remains the only accompaniment for the singer, before the percussion, bass and guitar breaks in, with some nice vocal harmonies added too.
A superb guitar solo near the end which is directly taken from "Plastic dreamer" off the "Once around the world" album --- though whether John Mitchell has listened to that album or not I don't know; perhaps it's mere coincidence, but then again ... At any rate, the song winds down as it began, on a simple little piano line and takes us into "Lights", where the band put the foot firmly down on the pedal and barrel along, a great song full of the usual It Bites hooks and melodies, and though both Beck and Mitchell take bass duties on the album whoever does the honours here deserves a mention, as the bass has a real marching, triumphant quality. Excellent chorus that just screams "stage show!"
And for most bands that would be a decent place to close the album. But It Bites aren't finished with us yet, oh no! There's been nineteen years between this and their last album, and they're determined to squeeze as much as they can out of this one. And so we get the thirteen-minute epic "This is England" as a closer, which, to be fair, opens very similarly to the epic and title track that brought "Once around the world" to a close. A soft vocal over tinkling piano and lush synth brings us into the second minute before uptempo bass and squeaking keys with chimes opens into a big hard guitar part with a stronger vocal from Mitchell, harder percussion and the intensity of the song slides up a couple of notches. Driven mostly on almost waiting guitar now, it's just getting into the fourth minute when the song explodes on the back of a searing guitar solo and rattling percussion. Slipping back then on tinkling piano again it's not long before the guitar punches its way back into the mix and then fades back out as vocal harmonies in almost a Queen fashion take the song.
Dalton then properly winds up his drumkit and gets going, and the track is now six minutes old as the title comes into the hook, but unfortunately it's not a hook they hang the song on, which I feel was perhaps a mistake because it really works, but after this they more or less ditch it after one more outing, as the song moves into a warbly frenetic keyboard passage that descends and leads into a recording of a speech of some sort, backed by bass and guitar and drums, then a very Genesisesque keyboard solo before a narrative emerges. I would be lying if I said I knew what the song was about, and even having the lyric doesn't make it any easier to decipher, but then I've never been quite sure what "Supper's ready" is meant to be either. Doesn't stop me enjoying it.
Over an appropriate church organ from Beck Mitchell sings about a vicar who would not confess his sins, and about some woman who lost her child in a hospital. The organ then breaks out into a big booming roar as the song nears its conclusion on a strings-like keyboard passage and a powerful vocal from Mitchell, finally breaking down into a soft retreading of the opening on keys as Mitchell sings
"At the end of the day/ I'm going home."
TRACKLISTING
1. Oh my God
2. Ghosts
3. Playground
4. Memory of water
5. The tall ships
6. The wind that shakes the barley
7. Great disaster
8. Fahrenheit
9. For safekeeping
10. Lights
11. This is England
Perhaps I shouldn't be quite so amazed at how brilliant this album is. I raved enough over "Once around the world" two years ago, and I'm aware what It Bites are capable of. But other than that album I never really thought they managed to achieve the potential they were so clearly capable of, and after what I would term two disappointing albums --- at least in comparison to that one --- and almost twenty years, it's more than gratifying to find that they did finally manage to create an album that not only measures up to "Once" but in many ways surpasses it. The songwriting here is nothing short of top drawer, and the band just completely mesh together, even though there are only three of them. The replacement of Francis Dunnery was always going to be a tricky prospect --- in way ways, he
was It Bites. He sang, played guitar, composed the songs.
But in John Mitchell I believe the guys hit pure gold. As I said, I've always had the utmost respect for him as a guitarist, whether with Kino, Arena or Frost*, but did not know until now how superb a singer he could be, not to mention songwriter. It wasn't until 2000 that he was allowed to contribute any songs to Arena's albums, and that resulted in the massively popular "Immortal?", and the albums just improved from there on. I don't see his writing anything for Frost* (though he may have) and Kino simply credited all their songwriting to the band, though as it was there that he met Beck and Dalton, he may very well have written for that band. Whatever the truth, some of the songs he wrote for "The tall ships" are nothing short of remarkable.
Remarkable, too, is the fact that a band, basically thought dead without a new album in almost twenty years, could come storming back after a breakup and a major lineup change and record such a brilliant album, almost like Asia returning with "Phoenix" in the same year, though they had only been apart for four years at that time. Again, I must thank Anteater, without whom I might have heard this album, but if at all it would have been a lot later than I did, and I would have missed out on a true gem, and a classic comeback album. Thanks, man!
