Blomljud --- Moon Safari --- 2008
I have to be honest: when I looked at this and saw that there were two ten minute tracks, a fifteen minute one and a THIRTY-TWO minute one I paled. However I've really liked what I've heard from Moon Safari so far, so I'm happy to give it a ago. The album title, apparently, means "Flowersound", and as it unfolds I can see why: there's a definite sense of nature and a real pastoral feeling about this, the Swedish prog band's second effort. It starts off well with a Beach Boys-style acapella opener that's very pleasant, and on into a nice piano-driven second track, with a very early Genesis sound about it, very soothing vocals from Simon Åkesson and Petter Sandström and some lovely harmonies, reminds me a bit of Blunstone or Woolfson. Certain sense of Spock's Beard about the piano parts too. Really nice. Have to say I'm really impressed.
Nice Country feel to the appropriately-named “In the countryside”, some really sweet percussion courtesy of Tobias Lundgren, puts me in mind of “Hedgerow” off the Big Big Train “English Electric Part I” album. Sort of. “Moonwalk” is a great instrumental with a lot of guitar in it --- Sandström plays guitar on this album as well as singing (and a lot of other instruments too!) but I think the bulk of the fretwork comes from Pontus Åkesson, especially the beautiful twelve-string and some lush mandolin --- very uptempo. Two ten-minuters follow each other but really this is so consistently good I don't even notice: I'm just kind of letting the music wash over me. Lovely. These guys remind me in a way of an old German pop band called Freiheit, which nobody will know. Nobody. But I have yet to hear anything resembling a bad track, and we're more than halfway through.
“Yasgur's farm” has more country/bluegrass style guitar with a lovely booming synth, rippling piano ... ah hell I could go on but this is supposed to be short.
Short, Trollheart! Look it up! Okay, I'm shutting up and just enjoying the music until ...hey! They just robbed a Springsteen lyric there! “Rosalita”, I think. Nice little reel or jig or something celtic anyway in “Lady of the woodlands”, one of the few short tracks, which is followed by the other, “A tale of three and tree”, which melds the seventies art-prog of Gabriel's Genesis with the soft rock crooning of David Gates and throws some eighties Alan Parsons in for good measure. Just perfect.
Yes, I'm aware I'm going on to my fourth paragraph and the massive epic has yet to hit me, but this album is too good to just write a few lines, sorry: it needs to be properly treated, and I'm already lining it up for a full review in my journal next year. The vocal harmonies come totally into their own on this track, then we're into that epic, the penultimate track, almost long enough to be an album in its own right and split into four sections. “Other half of the sky” runs to a total of almost thirty-two minutes, its first part, “Written in the stars” a soft, lush, gentle lullaby that really showcases the vocal talent of, well, both lead vocalists, as it's hard to know who takes lead here.
Some beautiful piano work and gentle guitar just frame the melody perfectly, and there's a feel of early Floyd around the “Meddle” era here as well as of course classic Genesis. It kicks up then on bouncy Hammond for “The meaning of success”, taking a turn somewhat into seventies Yes territory but without ditching all the already-mentioned influences, and with more of a role for the guitar in a harder sense. Returning to its softer acoustic tone then for part three, “The child inside the man” as it slows down again, getting nice and pastoral with some flute and piano, ah, but then it ramps up with a superb keyboard solo and much faster percussion, superb Hammond coming in evoking the best of the likes of “Cinema show” and “One for the vine”, then some beautiful Gilmouresque guitar leads in an instrumental to open part four, “After all”, with some recorded broadcast stuff going on in the background
a la Porcupine Tree. A definite sense of a big closing section as the vocal comes back in against powerful evocative Hammond. It's amazing, but over half an hour has just gone by and it doesn't even feel like it.
Long as it is though, and epic closer though it would have made, there's one more track to go. With a real feel of “The carpet crawlers”, final track “To sail beyond the sunset” finishes off this album perfectly, with a pastoral, gentle, lush tune that just plays out the album in a perfect almost coda after the gargantuan “Other half of the sky”. What an album!
TRACKLISTING
1. Constant bloom
2. Methuselah's children
3. In the countryside
4. Moonwalk
5. Bluebells
6. The ghost of flowers past
7. Yasgur's farm
8. Lady of the woodlands
9. A tale of three and tree
10. Other half of the sky
(i) Written in the stars
(ii) The meaning of success
(iii) The child inside the man
(iv) After all
11. To sail beyond the sunset
Rating:
10/10 (I know; it's really just that good!) I have GOT to get the rest of their discography! Ant, my man...?
