Music Banter - Album Club 2019: Room

First off, big “Thanks” to Neapolitan for introducing me to Room and for taking the trouble to write out the lyrics. As Zhanteime mentioned, the fact that Pre-Flight is Room’s only album added to the intrigue I felt as I began listening to this obscure album.

Intrigue morphed into pleasure and surprise as the music progressed. In the first couple of tracks we hear Prog riffs, restrained use of elec guitar and good vocals. Yes, I liked the singer – in fact I thought it was a guy with an unusually clear voice until I read otherwise. Not sure why OH took against her contribution so much. Then the surprising switch to blues, which was well-executed imo, especially the second, jazzier blues track with horns included. Maybe their blues playing isn’t jump-off-your-seat exceptional, but I’m also not sure why OH took against that so much as well. ;)
I thought the second side instrumental sections were prob the best bit of the album, with some decent riffs and lead guitar runs to keep things moving along, whereas the lyrics seemed better on the first side. The lyrics of Pre-Flight and Where Did I Go Wrong address common experience with stuff about sunsets and washing clothes, but by the time the band have reached War they have fallen prey to that common vice of prog bands: unwarrented grandiosity. If I was going to put a line like, "And the death cry of man goes unheard" into a song, I'd just mumble it once and hope no-one would notice, but on an otherwise decent track, Room have made it the ringing conclusion to four verses. :(

Summing up, this is a well-balanced album of consistently good musicianship which I’ll def be playing again. Various styles are successfully mixed together, and perhaps, if anywhere, that is the album’s weakness: I found myself thinking “That bit could be TenYearsAfter. That bit could be Jon Anderson” and I felt that Room never quite discovered their Unique Selling Point: Pre-Flight sounds at times like a medley of all the accepted 70s styles rather than an impassioned debut album from a new musical voice. Maybe that’s why it didn’t do better on its release, but from me it still gets 8 out of 10.