Album Title: The Flower King
Artist: Roine Stolt
Nationality: Swedish
Year: 1994
Subgenre: Not sure... it's got elements of classic and neo-prog: Neoclassical Prog?
Player(s): Roine Stolt (Lead Vocals, Guitars, Bass, Keyboards, Percussion), Hasse Froberg (Vocals only on tracks 1 & 8), Hasse Brunisson/Jaime Salazar (Drums), Dexter Frank Jr (Keyboards, “electronics”), Don Azarro (Bass, Moog Taurus), Ulf Wallander (Sax)
Familiarity: None really. I once heard a Flower Kings track but don't recall liking it.
Favourite track(s): “The Flower King”, “Humanizzimo”
Why? The title and opener just blew me away with its melody, its upbeat message and it was not what I was expecting at all. The epic I think is constructed very well and every time I listened to it it got better.
Least favourite track(s): None
Why? I like everything on this album.
Any preconceptions prior to listening, whether good or bad? As I said above I had only heard The Flower Kings and don't remember liking them so was expecting more of the same. Also, from the album cover and the title I thought of expected a kind of hippy space/prog vibe, which was not what we got at all.
Factoids you'd like to share? Although a solo album this was apparently regarded as the first album of the band The Flower Kings, from which obviously the name was taken.
End impression: Much better than I had expected and it's made me decide to give the whole band another shot.
Comments: When this came up I thought “Oh no! I remember the bloody Flower Kings!” But like us all I have to listen to it so I hit play, expecting a sort of hippy, peace-and-love message with a more or less psychedelic feel. From the beginning I was taken aback at the clear, crisp melody and the way the opener made me feel. I really liked this. To be fair, this album never once flags or dips in quality: it's totally solid all the way through. Stolt certainly takes control here --- check all the instruments he plays above and he also sings lead vocals.
I'm kind of reminded in odd ways of the debut Supertramp album, released 1970, particularly on the second track and the way it ends. But that's not to say Stolt (or, one would assume, later the Flower Kings) were trying to rip off that band, just that there are the odd similarities between the two, for me. The keyboard work on this album is quite amazing, seen most clearly on “The magic circus of Zeb”, when Stolt sort of melds early Genesis and Yes into something that is much more than the sum of its parts, and yet totally his own sound. The instrumentals, of which there are three, are superb and never bore or seem to drag, despite one of them being seven minutes long.
The highlight though is definitely “Humanizzimo”, which runs for 21 minutes and change, a fantastic epic that has everything: time signature changes, tempo changes, sections and movements, and several genres running through it, with at the end of it all a real message of peace and love which somehow does not come across as twee or insincere. I also like the way the closer bookends with the opener and gives a sort of reprise while fooling you into thinking it's a new track with its odd title. Pretty cool all round really.
Rating: I have to go with a high one here, given that I didn't expect to be bothered and am very impressed at the end of it all, so given also its pedigree and what spawned from this album I'm going for
4.5