The month (and indeed the year) is fast disappearing, so let's get back to our
and jump back three years from the last Pendragon album we looked at. Yeah, let's take a squint through
Album title: The Window of Life
Artist: Pendragon
Nationality: English
Year: 1993
Chronology: 4
Track Listing: Walls of Babylon/Ghosts/Breaking the Spell/The Last Man on Earth/Nostradamus (Stargazing)/Am I Really Losing You
Comments: This album highlights one of the bugbears - perhaps the only - I have with this band, encapsulated mostly in the opening track, which we’ll get to. In terms of those, it’s quite short on them, only a total of six actual songs, though two are in the double-figure minutes range, and a third comes close. It opens on “The Walls of Babylon”, which has a dramatic organ start then kicks up nicely, though it ends pretty awful really. My problem is where they basically rip off Supertramp, word for word and melody for melody from the song “Hide in Your Shell” off the
Crime of the Century album, to say nothing of a very “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” opening, and a shameless rip off of Genesis on “Watcher of the Skies”. Sigh. Plagiarism times three on one track. Ruins an otherwise pretty damn good song,
Lovely piano work from Clive Nolan on “Ghosts” nut here again the old problem rears its head, as they clearly copy Genesis on “Firth of Fifth” with a keyboard riff just basically stolen from that song. Oh, and the opening to “Dance on a Volcano” too. Double sigh, perhaps triple sigh. It’s hard to take these (admittedly very good) songs on their own merits where Pendragon are so liberally helping themselves from the pot of ideas cooked up by their elders. “Breaking the Spell” is the first, so far as I can see, on the album to have all original ideas, and it’s the better for it, allowing Barrett to really show what he can do on the guitar. From one epic to another, the longest in fact, as “The Last Man on Earth” runs for almost fifteen minutes, and as it contains the title I always imagined it
was the title track. In fact, there
is none but that doesn’t matter. If there’s a central theme song to the album this is it.
It opens with a soft, lush section and then kicks into a more uptempo vein, though again I have to mark the Genesis influences with the midsection where they reuse the outro from “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight”. Just cant get away from the desire to copy Genesis, it seems. Also a harkback to
The Wall’s “Waiting for the Worms” before it again jumps into rocking life and ends very well to be fair. I really like the build-up to “Nostradamus (Stargazing)” with again a bouncy beat and simplicity that looks back to “Saved by You” and “Back in the Spotlight”, but hiding within the basic almost commercial melody are layers of sounds and ideas perhaps not at first apparent. The album then closes on a sumptuous, aching little ballad, “Am I Really Losing You” ending with the most beautiful little echoey guitar fade-out I’ve heard in a while.
Track(s) I liked: Everything
Track(s) I didn't like: Nothing
One standout: All equally excellent
One rotten apple: Not in this barrel!
Overall impression: A great Pendragon album, a real stride forward from the debut. Some beautiful instrumental work, some great ideas, some powerful vocals and evocative lyrics. If only they could be a little more original...
Rating: 9.4/10