Trollheart

99.

Album title: Clocks That Tick (But Never Talk)
Artist: Grand Tour
Nationality: British (Scottish)
Sub-genre: Neo-prog


Is it a coincidence that the first two albums on the list both have clocks in the title? I guess so. They're certainly two very different albums by two very different bands. I'm aware of the work of Comedy of Errors, though I have to be honest and say I have never listened to a full album, and Grand Tour appear to have grown up out of that band, not from the ashes, as Comedy of Errors are still around, but as a kind of perhaps not side project in the vein of Pete Trewavas's Edison's Children or John Mitchell's various alter-ego bands (Kino, Frost*, Lonely Robot etc) but I don't know, project in tandem? Maybe this is why, despite being together for fifteen years, Grand Tour have released precisely two albums. In fact, when Comedy of Errors reformed in 2011 after a hiatus of nearly twenty years, they released an album called Disobey, followed two years later by Fanfare and Fantasy. All well and good. But in the year Grand Tour released their first album, Comedy of Errors also released their third, Spirit, following this up with House of the Mind in 2017.

So how that worked I don't know. You seem to have Comedy of Errors releasing an album in 2015 at the same time, roughly, as Grand Tour debuted their Heavy on the Beach. Guess they worked pretty hard, so like I say we can forgive them for only churning out the two (Grand Tour) albums in fifteen years, with the first only coming across ten years after they, um, formed. Right.

So, was it worth the wait? Well...

One thing I will say upfront about this album is that I did not like the vocals. Not one bit. There's something really odd about the vocal stylings of Joe Cairney, and while I can give the guy props for having been the driving force behind Comedy of Errors and obviously lasting through the neo-prog revival of the eighties led by bands like Marillion, Pallas and IQ, I just don't get his voice. I don't get it so much that for a long while I wasn't going to bother giving this a second spin. But if there's one thing my adventures with Black Metal, Death Metal and Doom Metal has taught me it's that just because the vocals may not be your cup of tea doesn't mean you should give up on the band. I've learned to appreciate superb shredding while ignoring or even laughing at high-pitched shrieks from a BM vocalist, or the low, animalistic gruntings that sometimes characterise Funeral Doom Metal. So where say five years ago I would have said if I don't like the vocals it doesn't matter how good the music is, I won't listen to it, I don't feel like that any more. Much.

So I was prepared to give Grand Tour a chance. Not, I hasten to add, that Cairney's vocals come close to a Steve Tucker or a Chuck Schuldiner, or even a Quorthon; I can listen to them without my ears bleeding or feeling like I should maybe bring the cat in before the neighbour's dog is let out. I just don't particularly like them, and unfortunately, in progressive rock, a good, melodious, mellifluous voice is often a real prerequisite. Even prog metal fails to benefit from indecipherable or unlistenable vocals. Threshold have had some great and very powerful vocalists (Damien Wilson, Andrew “Mac” McDermott (RIP), Glynn Morgan) but power is one thing, violence another. I can listen to Black Metal vocals or the growls on Doom Metal because the music complements them, sometimes even demands them. When you're singing about Satan (what a cool name for a Black metal band, huh?) you really need someone who sounds like they're screeching in pain, and you don't want to hear a soft crooner when he's growling about the bleakness of life and the absurdity of existence, do you?

But while both those sub-genres tend to focus more on the music (like Janszoon once helpfully advised me, think of the rough vocals as just another instrument) with the vocals either secondary or often almost superfluous, prog rock is all about the lyrics, and no matter how nice the music is – unless the band is instrumental, as some are – you need and want to be able to hear and make out the vocals. This is not in any way an issue with Grand Tour, but the fact that you can't as it were ignore the vocals and concentrate on the music – if you do, you lose a lot of the meaning of the songs – makes it imperative really to be able to enjoy the vox, and while I slowly warmed to Cairney, he would never be my favourite singer, in fact I have a hard time thinking of anyone in prog who I dislike more, in terms of vocals.

Anyway, now I've got that off my chest, let's get down to cases. Firstly, there are only seven tracks on this album. That might seem a problem, until you realise two (including the opener) run for over eleven minutes, two shade the ten-minute mark and nothing on this album falls below seven. So overall you're looking at an even longer runtime than the previous album, more than an hour in total. That's not too bad.

Now, as mentioned, the opener is over eleven minutes long. This isn't, as I said, a debut album but it is only Grand Tour's second, so I suppose given the fact that they could probably rely on their no doubt large and loyal fanbase from Comedy of Errors to support them, perhaps it's not as daring a move as our friends This Winter Machine, but it's still impressive. You'll probably be glad to know that it's not an instrumental. I'm not sure even I could take eleven minutes without vocals (though given what I said above, maybe that wouldn't be such a trial).



There is, however, a very slow and gradual fade-in, which makes you feel, for about a minute or more, that maybe you didn't hit the play button, or your headphones aren't plugged in. Eventually though you start to hear sounds, as we pass the two-minute mark (I kid you not!) and the vocals come in, kind of out of nowhere. I have no idea why they need such a long lead-in, making the song perhaps two or three minutes longer than it needs to be, but once it gets going the title track proves to have been worth waiting for. There are nice vocal harmonies in the style of maybe Lindisfarne, Fairport Convention or CSNY, and the song takes off at a nice lick by about the fourth minute. Again, I suppose GT can rely on their Comedy of Errors fans, but even so, I feel this has been something of a gamble. Most people, hearing nothing after a minute, might give up, either in frustration, impatience or bewilderment. Needless to say, I persevered, and was appropriately rewarded for it, and so will you be if you do likewise.

Good guitar work from Mike Spalding, sort of reminds me of the best of Twelfth Night's Andy Revell in places, and so far on this listen Cairney's voice doesn't seem to be grating on me as much as I remember. I do note though that he sounds distinctly foreign (German, Dutch, Finnish, something like that) and not at all like a Scot. He can certainly sing, to be fair. One thing I do find is that in a song of this length I struggle to find a hook, even a chorus. It's perhaps a little unstructured, reminding me of the weaker work of Polish proggers Millenium. Fades out as unobtrusively and unimpressively as it opened. Probably not the greatest way to kick off your album: compare this opener to the triumphant one from This Winter Machine. After this, sure, you're ready to hear more, but are you in two minds?

At just under seven and a half minutes, the next track is, believe it or not, the shortest on the album. “Don't Cry Now” seems to utilise some phasing on the vocals, whether that's an actual vocoder being used or just digital processing on the voices I don't know, but it gives a sort of alien feel to the opening of the song, which sounds like it could be a ballad. Is it too soon for a slow song? TWM certainly didn't seem to think so, though it can be a gamble, throwing one in so early in the album, especially after what came across as a somewhat disorganised opener. Hits into a kind of bluesy swing style half way through, and the song seems to follow the theme of “the show must go on”, the idea of an actor/singer feeling sad or upset but needing to complete the performance, with the warning “Don't cry now for the audience may be watching”. It's a better song, but for my money fails, so far, to lift the album from not quite mediocrity, but maybe banality. They'll need to try much harder.



“Back in the Zone” is another almost twelve-minute epic, with some nice keys from Hew Montgomery leading it in, and at least this time there's no faffing about with two to three minutes of ambient noise and sound effects as the song gets going quickly. There are echoes of Arena here, but I can't shake that folky feeling; it's definitely in the vocals, makes you expect to start hearing accordions and fiddles or something. It's a decent song, but again I must question the length. Does it need to run for twelve minutes? We're in minute seven now and I could see it quite happily ending here. I'd have to say it's stretched out beyond what it need to be. “The Panic” opens a little like “I Want to Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston (!) but quickly settles, after the odd percussive intro, down and becomes a, well, almost Duran Duran style song with squealing synths and a chakka-chakka-chakka drumbeat. Tres strange!

A third of the way into its slightly less than nine-minute run and no vocals yet, so I wonder if we're talking instrumental here? I really can't remember: I listened to this album a good deal the first time but it's been about two months since I heard it last and I've listened to a lot of prog albums since then. It's almost – though not quite – as if I'm hearing it for the first time again. But as we're now five minutes in and there's been no singing I think my original idea was correct. An instrumental, and quite an odd one for a prog rock album, very synthpop I feel. Not that it's bad, just unexpected, even to someone who has heard this album many times before. Maybe it wasn't that memorable, though I thought I remembered enjoying it. The next two are both in the ten-minute range, with “Shadow Walking” featuring a long, dramatic, marching instrumental intro which lasts for nearly two and a half minutes before Cairney comes in with the vocal. It seems to focus on the idea of a wasted life, hanging around doing nothing, perhaps pointing obliquely to street gangs and crime.

The hopelessness of a misspent youth come through in lines like “hanging out with faceless friends I've never seen before” and “crazy dreams when you find out life ain't all it seems”. Nice kind of vocal chorus going on there in the midpoint, perhaps a touch of paranoia (justified or not I can't say) and fear in the lyric. A very nice guitar solo then from Spalding, though I would have preferred it to have been longer, and it seems to be superseded then by violin and flute, though I see no credit for players of either so must assume Montgomery is synthesising these on his keyboard.

Seems the next track slipped in without my noticing, and “Game Over” I have to say really doesn't make any proper impression on me. It's not that it's a bad track, I just don't see anything special about it, and again it's far too long. I think the lyrical idea is grappling with conflating an addiction to video games with a broken or breaking-up love affair, but to my mind it's handled clumsily and does not come off. Nice soloing in the sixth or seventh minute, but other than that, not a whole lot to say about it. That leaves us with one before we end, and it's the ballad, “Slumber Sweetly”, and does at least close the album in style. Unfortunately, it can't paper over the cracks which have become more and more visible as I review this.


Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Clocks That Tick (But Never Talk) (11:41)
2. Don't Cry Now (7:27)
3. Back In The Zone (11:50)
4. The Panic (8:56)
5. Shadow Walking (10:14)
6. Game Over (9:48)
7. Slumber Sweetly (8:03)

Total time 67:59

Line-up / Musicians

- Joe Cairney / vocals

- Mark Spalding / guitar

- Hew Montgomery / keyboards

- Chris Radford / bass

- Bruce Levick / drums



I hesitate to keep comparing the two, but I can think of at least four songs I was humming (and able to hum, so able to remember) from A Tower of Clocks after I had finished it, whereas here there really isn't even one that stands out. It's odd really, because as I said I seemed to remember quite enjoying the album, but looking at it now for the first time through the cold dispassionate eye of the reviewer I can see its many flaws. As I mentioned, I'm not at all familiar with Comedy of Errors, but on the basis of this album I wouldn't be in any hurry to check them out.

It's not that it's a bad album at all, it's just it's merely okay, and for me, okay is generally not really good enough. It certainly pales beside This Winter Machine's effort, and if memory serves the one coming up next blows it away too. Perhaps it might be a little snide to say that there's more needed to make a decent prog rock album than a good pun in the title, but I do feel rather let down by this overall, and again, I'm surprised because I had relatively fond recent memories of it.

Rating: 7/10

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Trollheart

98

Album title: All This Will Be Yours
Artist: Bruce Soord
Nationality: British (English)
Sub-genre: Crossover


So who is Bruce Soord, when he's not bequeathing all his earthly possessions to his children? Well, he has something of a penchant for taking pointy fruits from people without their permission. That's right: he's the founder, vocalist and guitarist for proggers The Pineapple Thief, who have skillfully avoided the Fruit Police for over twenty years now, and so remain at large, having turned out thirteen albums to date. Although I have all of their albums lurking on my hard drive – in company with about 4,000 others which have yet to be listened to – I have never heard a single chord, never mind a song by these guys, so I can't speak to whether this, Soord's second (technically third, of which more in a moment) solo album sounds anything like his music from the band, but if it does, then I need to check out the thieving ones post haste, because this is really impressive.

I intimated there was some debate as to whether this is Soord's second or third solo album, and that's because back in 2013 he took his first flight solo in concert with Jonas Renske, known from Katatonia among others, so the album The Wisdom of Crowds could, in some quarters, be seen as his first solo effort, but technically his first solo, as in, completely on his own and released under only his name album wouldn't come till two years later. I guess it's not that important, but it does make it difficult to decide where in his short solo discography this album fits. That being as it may, it's a stunning achievement and quickly became one of my favourite albums of that year (even if I was listening to it this year for the first time) which makes it annoying that I found it languishing at the foot of the table again, and, like the two previous artists, it has now been removed completely. But hey, that's just a list, right?

Before I listened to this album I had no idea who Bruce Soord was; I think I checked him out halfway through or maybe afterwards, I can't remember. But it does mean that even had I known the work of The Pineapple Thief, I still went in without any expectations or pretensions. The fact that I was so taken with the album perhaps speaks to the idea Soord can woo fans and newcomers such as me alike.

It kicks off with a short track, which, given the ponderous epics (good and bad) which have opened the last two albums, comes as something of a relief. It's basic acoustic guitar in a low-key opening; reading a little further I see this album is to celebrate the birth of his third child, and also to decry the poverty and despair he sees or saw in his hometown of Yeovil (England), so the title is actually something of an ironic jest, a sarcastic dig at how bad the world is. I read that Soord recorded things like children screaming on buses going to school, the sound of the shuffling feet of addicts on the way to meet their pushers, police sirens and other local sounds, so as to form a backdrop to his emotional, soulful music here. This I did not know when I originally listened to it, and it certainly adds an extra, and very important and personal layer to the album.

“The Secrets I Know” is pretty much gone before you can really get to grips with it (there's a female vocal in there somewhere but I don't know who this is), barely a chance to appreciate the soft and yearning voice before we're on to “Our Gravest Threat Apart”, with some of those field recordings in the background adding a real sense of atmosphere, pathos and reality to the song. It's a little more upfront, a little more in your face, with sharp piano and tight percussion, the guitar this time electric I think (information on the album is not easy to come by, which is to say pretty much impossible) and though I don't know his band, the artist that comes to mind when I listen to this is Antimatter, where Mick Moss creates soundscapes out of loneliness and despair and somehow manages to shoot them through with threads of beauty, love and hope. The overarching theme through this song – and most of the album – is the refrain “there has to be another way.”

More acoustic then is “The Solitary Path of a Convicted Man”, very introspective and emotional, with for the first time a really nice guitar solo, some sort of howling vocal which works very well in the context of the song, and I think it's probably unlikely you're going to hear any ten-minute keyboard solos or songs about dragons (yeah yeah, cliche I know) on this album, nor indeed do I expect Bruce to rock out at any point. It's not by any means a standard prog record – it may not even qualify as prog at all: certainly not in terms of song length. The title track, up next, is the second longest at just over six minutes. Most prog bands are often only getting going at this point. But as I say, not an ordinary album.



There's almost a soft indie rock vibe to this, the vocal again restrained, the music firm but never overriding Soord's plaintive voice, and another good guitar solo here. I also detect certain elements of the darker side of a-ha here, though that might just be me. “Time Does Not Exist” quickly became one of my favourites on the album with its earworm hook, its gentle acoustic guitar and its almost country sensibility, some really nice piano too. There's a feeling of drama and urgency about the melody, quite epic in its way for such a short track, running a mere three minutes and change. Proof that you don't have to extend a song to twelve minutes to make it work – Grand Tour, I'm looking at you!

Slightly longer by about thirty seconds, “One Misstep” comes in as the heaviest track, if anything here can be so described, with punchy but hollow percussion, almost like military drums beating out a slow tattoo, rising synth complementing Soord's low, tortured vocal, then the longest track is the six-and-a-half minute “You Hear the Voices”, with an instant hook in the melody from the very start, a recurring piano line that is really hard to get out of your head, should you for some reason wish to. Soord's vocal here is almost inaudible at first, crooning low and muted against slick bass and guitar, the soft percussion a heartbeat ticking away in the background. But it's a slowburner, and increases in intensity and power as the track goes on, with certain elements of the bleakest of Depeche Mode in there too.



“Cut the Flowers” sounds like the sort of gardening tip you might get on the BBC in the afternoon, but in fact it refers to wreaths on graves, Soord channelling the best of Gilmour and the Edge at their most introspective, and again I can't help marking the comparison to Antimatter, especially on Planetary Confinement and Lights Out. The song veers from soft and bitter to tough and angry, but never loses its edge (sorry), and again Soord knows the old adage of less is more, this fine piece of music lasting for a mere four and a half minutes, to take us into the closer, which could be interpreted as a warning to a lover, but actually is a meditation on the inevitable exit we all have to perform from the stage of life, and is most likely directed to his children.

“One Day I Will Leave You” engages the slow, plodding blues of Nick Cave at his darkest, with a very philosophical acceptance of the end. Mostly carried on simple strummed acoustic guitar, it nevertheless manages to insert its own little insidious earworm into the melody, and you can't help but hum this paean to the Great Beyond as the album ends. Quite darkly clever really; no redemption, no changing the world, no advice, just a simple thought: “don't mourn my passing, I was always passing through.”

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. The Secrets I Know (2:24)

2. Our Gravest Threat Apart (4:14)

3. The Solitary Path of a Convicted Man (3:44)

4. All This Will Be Yours (6:04)

5. Time Does Not Exist (3:33)

6. One Misstep (4:00)

7. You Hear the Voices (6:54)

8. Cut the Flowers (4:35)

9. One Day I Will Leave You (5:17)



Total Time 40:45


This album is labelled under crossover prog, but to be honest, were it not for Bruce Soord being the head Pineapple, I really don't think this would be considered prog at all. That's in no way a criticism; I don't think it should be put down as a prog album. There's very little progressive rock about it: it's got no multi-part suites, no intricate solos – keyboard or other – and the lyrics are all very earthy and mundane, with none of the exuberance or even attempts to avoid the real world that can characterise other prog bands and albums. What you do get is a very mature, straight-forward, frank testament from a man who has seen the underbelly of society at first hand, and worries what kind of world his children will inherit.

It's not quite the grinning-deaths-head nihilism of a Tom Waits or a Nick Cave, but it's dark, introspective, challenging stuff. If you approach this album correctly (as I had not originally, not having read up on it) it should really make you think. It should also make you sad, angry, bitter, and maybe, just maybe, want to change things for the better. But if not, that's fine: I don't think Soord is setting out here to be any sort of a champion, nor sending out a clarion call to other shining knights. He's just shrugging, sighing and saying this is how it is. I wish it wasn't, but it is. Maybe all he wants us to do is look.

And listen.

Rating: 9/10

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Trollheart

97.


Album title: Storm Warning
Artist: Andrew Roussak
Nationality: Russian
Sub-genre: Symphonic Prog


These next three albums, be warned, did not impress me on first listen. I say first listen, because at the time that was all I gave them. Hey, I had a list of 100 to do and the ones I did like were getting like 3-5 listens, and I'm no spring chicken, so I hadn't time to waste on albums that didn't click with me pretty quickly. Besides, who would care? It's not like I was, you know, reviewing them or something.

Well, now I am.

So it's time to revisit them and see if they were as bad, or as poor as I thought first time out. It's also only fair (to who? Me? Oh no: nobody thinks about the poor reviewer, do they?) that I make sure I give every album on the list a listen and a review, though I can tell you now, some of these made what little hair I have left stand on end, and I may still fail to make it all the way through some of them. If that's the case I'll note it, but I'll do my best to try to persevere. For my public. What do you mean? Lots of people are reading. Well, some people. Well, one person. Maybe.

Anyway, let's get the obvious joke out of the way before we begin, shall we? Yes, his name is Roussak and he's Russian so I'm sure he has never before heard anyone call him Russkie. Do you feel better now? Can we proceed? I'm so glad.

Reading up on him, Andrew Roussak should be someone I want to hear. He's a classically-trained musician who has an abiding love of progressive rock and plays in a few bands, composes film scores and a whole lot more besides. He's won awards. Really. Well, it says here anyway. But I just remember when I played this originally, if I recall correctly, it wasn't that I hated it; I think I was just bored by it. Maybe I didn't give it a chance. Well, now I will. We'll see how it goes this time.

This is Roussak's second solo album, but like Mr. Soord in the last post we have a difference of opinion here. See, his first was released in 2008, entitled No Trespassing. Cool. But then he recorded Blue Intermezzo in 2010, but that's a classical piano album, with things like tangos and nocturnes and, yeah, intermezzos all over the place, and nothing other than him and a grand piano. Nothing wrong with that: I love classical as much as the next guy. But it certainly isn't prog. So can we consider Storm Warning his second solo album, if we're talking only prog? Or is it even prog, because as we found with the Pineapple Chief, well, even his second (or third, depending how you view it) solo album isn't actually prog, as such.

Such topics could be debated till the end of time, but we don't have that long so let's leave it to our robot descendants to squabble over what constitutes a Roussak solo album and just say this is not his debut, and leave it at that. There are vocals on this, and guitars, and what looks like some sort of suite at the end, so we'll tentatively label it prog, and after all, it is in the list. Mind you, so was Bruce, but enough of that. I think I remember being bored by track two or three, so let's see if I feel the same way now.

A lot of sound effects and technical foolery taking us into the first track, “Enter Code”, and for a moment it's too avant-garde/experimental for me, then Roussak comes in on the piano and it takes better shape. Bass cuts in and we're getting a real Alan Parsons vibe now, with warbly keyboard straight out of the Rick Wakeman playbook, growling then introspective guitars. I'm reliably informed Roussak plays all the instruments here – bar guitars on one or two songs. “Bringing Peace and Progress” is not, as you might expect, a ballad, but another rocker, driven on guitar and with the sound effects mostly of jets flying low overhead. It's a long track – though not the longest – at just over eight minutes, and it looks to be, like the opener, instrumental, so let's hope there's enough here to keep the interest, as instrumental can be, as I mentioned before, tedious and repetitive. It's certainly got great energy, that's for sure, some rippling piano passages before the guitar takes control again then it gets quite funky in the middle, but I'm still reserving judgement. I'm not by any means won over yet, and I can definitely see why I stopped listening the first time. “Left Alone Outside” does seem to be a slower track, riding on acoustic guitar and almost using elements of the old standard “Classical Gas” in parts of the melody, but then it kicks up and gets heavier and reminds me of my old friend Plankton, who can make a guitar do just about anything he wants it to.



This is the first track to feature vocals, and they come courtesy of one Max Kottler as the song slows back down. So is it a ballad or is it not? At this stage I can't say; the music seems to want to rock out but the vocal passages stick to slower lines. Confusing. This is also one of the three tracks on which Roussak hands guitar duties to others (or at least, the solos) and in this case it's Oli Weislogel who does the honours, and a very fine job he does of it too, even if it's pretty severely truncated. Kind of makes you wonder why he bothered. With a name like “Regata Storica” you probably know what to expect, and it's another instrumental, very much more in the classical mode than the progressive rock one, to my mind. Well, the opening part is, but then it goes back forty years to the heyday of prog rock with a wibbly wobbly keyboard extravaganza. Hmm. I feel Roussak's devotion to, almost adoration of Emerson and Wakeman is leading him here to also indulge in their seventies excesses, and for me it's pretty much a case more of showing off in a Yes/Dream Theater style than music I can actually enjoy.

At least there's some more singing on “Chasing Shadows”, this time from Nadia Ayche, who has a nice almost operatic voice and was, I believe, one of Roussak's vocal coaches. Um. I don't think he sings, does he? Why does he need a... well, maybe she's just a vocal coach he knows? Anyway it's a nice ballad, pretty stripped down with really only piano and voice, then the title track brings back in the sound effects (hell, it's called “Storm Warning” so I guess he couldn't resist throwing in a siren) and there's a real sense of panic and frenetic activity about the keyboard here, but I'm finding it to be basically more of the same, and there's not, so far, any track here I will remember when this is over. Some nice jazzy piano, yes, but it's all towards the same end and I don't get any real sense of cohesion from the album.

I would definitely expect a song titled “Can She Excuse My Wrongs” to be a ballad, but it begins with a very medieval sounding harpsichord thing, which I don't interpret as a good sign. Now it's kicking into another organ/Moog fest but yawn I'm so bored now. At least there's only one track left to go, even if it is ten minutes long. Oh look! There are some vocals at the end of “Can She Excuse ah I'm too bored to even write the whole title out”. It actually makes the song worse, if that's possible. Just completely pointless. Choral vocal harmonies right in the last minute? Why?



Well now we're onto the closer, which is that suite of which I spoke at the beginning. It all goes under the heading of “Malta Sketches” and opens with “Hola Beach Boogie” which is, well, a boogie on electric guitar - at least that's different, and lively. Then “1565” slows it all down on piano and synth, with Oli coming back in for a solo in part three, “Sunset in Valetta”, which also features a vocalist, this time Selina Waidmann, another vocal coach. Right. Like Oli on the other track, not sure why she bothered, as all she seems to do is croon some kind of vocalise. Oh well, at least it's over now.

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Enter Code (4:08)
2. Bringing Peace And Progress (8:02)
3. Left Alone Outside (7:30)
4. Regata Storica (6:02)
5. Chasing Shadows (4:37)
6. Storm Warning (5:41)
7. Can She Excuse My Wrongs (5:22)
8. Malta Sketches (10:15) :
- a. Hola Beach Boogie
- b. 1565
- c. Sunset in Valetta

Total time 51:37


See, usually I know, pretty much, whether an album is going to be worth my time or not. People talk about “growers”, but I've never really believed in that concept. If you're going to get into an album I personally hold the opinion that you'll hear something – you may not love it but you'll hear something that will encourage you to come back to it. A “grower”, to my understanding, is an album you don't like at first but “grow” to like, or even love. remember Frownland telling me after I had rejected his favourite Captain Beefheart album, that it took about forty listens to get into it. Who the hell has that sort of time, and who would want to waste such effort getting into something you clearly don't like?

So it was with Mr. Roussak. I knew from about track two that it wasn't necessarily terrible, but it was not for me. And so it has proved. It's a decent album, but not one I'd recommend because I don't see anything much in it to recommend. For me, it sits right alongside “poor” keyboard albums such as Derek Shernihan's Oceania or All Out by Don Airey. Just because they're good keysmen does not mean they make good solo records. I find a lot of keyboard-only albums can be very boring. I haven't listened to much of Wakeman's stuff, but I feel it could be a case of Sleepman in my case. I love keyboards, but I like them as support instruments, not up front a la Mister Ego himself, Keith of the Emersons.

So by all means listen to this if it's your thing. It's not a bad album, but for me it's just too staid and boring in terms of content, and it's been hard to write even this review without falling asleep at the keyboard. Ah, that's computer, not synthesiser.

Original decision vindicated.

Rating: 5/10

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Trollheart

96.

Album title: Spidermilk
Artist: The Mercury Tree
Nationality: American
Sub-genre: Heavy Prog


Fun (or not) fact: originally I thought the album title was the artist. Oh, Trollheart! You do make us smile! This was the album which more or less turned me against checking out future heavy prog albums, which may be its sin, or mine, or may be justified. I guess we'll see as we go through the list and check out albums I wasn't bothering with due to their being labelled as Heavy Prog. I do remember I didn't finish this and I really did not like what I heard, but again, we'll see how a listen to it with regard to actually reviewing it goes.

The Mercury Tree were formed in Portland, Oregon in 2004, but due to the many lineup changes that plague not only prog bands but most bands throughout their career, they seem never to have actually settled down to release an album until seven years later. Since then they've had five, of which this is the latest. They have some vague connection to Smashing Pumpkins – one of their drummers played with them, or something – but that's hardly relevant to this review. They're described as playing spaced-out shoegaze experimental and improvisational post-rock. Right.

The first thing I found, and it really annoyed me with this album was that the guitar was, presumably deliberately, out of tune, so as “I Am a Husk” begins I have already a sense of disorientation and an abiding dislike of this album. Other than the out-of-tune-ness the song isn't bad, but it's going to be hard to maintain my interest (if any) in the album if it all continues like this. I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies that there aren't any epics here: the longest track comes in at a shade over seven minutes. Even so, I can't say I'm particularly impressed by this and they're not making any friends here.

Okay, I see this is actually called a “17 note microtonal scale”, whatever that may be, rather than the music being out of tune, but it sounds the same to me as if everything is out of whack. I fully accept this is not incompetence or inexperience on the part of the band; it's all intentional. That doesn't make me feel much better. This microtonal nonsense continues (as I fear it may throughout the album) on “Vestments”, where it gets almost unbearable with a jazzy riff that just grates on my ears and sets my teeth on edge. I remember I definitely only lasted one track on this with the original listen, so I've already improved on that. How far I'll get this time is anybody's guess, but I don't expect to be finishing it. I have my thumb poised and ready over the button for the ejector seat.



It's very hard to write anything about this when it's so dissonant; the vocal is okay, but just okay, and the playing is fine I guess, but it's hard to concentrate on it when notes keep rising and falling and going all over the place, making it very difficult to get any sort of a handle on the music, which does seem to be broadly guitar-based – I have not yet, to my knowledge, heard any keyboards, but they could very well be in there for all I know. Or care. Yeah, apparently they are, not that you'd know it. Both of these tracks have been uptempo, brisk affairs that I could not hand on heart even call close to prog rock, but then maybe it's prog Jim, but not as we (or more specifically, I) know it. Or want to know it.

“Arc of an Ilk” is, where I think, I give up. There's piano I think, some sort of hollow bell sound, all microtonal or to me out of tune, a more falsetto vocal from Ben Spees, rippling guitar from Igliashon Jones and a steady percussive beat from the rhythm section but hell no this is where I bail. The only thing that's going through my mind as I listen to this is please, please for the love of Cthulhu and all the elder gods shut the hell up and go away!

Remember this?


Songs / Tracks Listing


1. I Am A Husk (4:48)
2. Vestments (4:39)
3. Arc Of An Ilk (6:35)
4. I'll Pay (6:22)
5. Interglacial (1:45)
6. Superposition Of Silhouettes (3:43)
7. Kept Man (3:15)
8. (Throw Up My) Hands (2:59)
9. Disremembered (7:07)
10. Brake For Genius (3:32)
11. Tides Of The Spine (4:33)


Total time 49:18

Line-up / Musicians

- Igliashon Jones / guitar

- Ben Spees / guitar, keyboards, vocals, mixing
- Oliver Campbell / bass
- Connor Reilly / drums

With:

- Tony Mowe / alto & baritone saxophones




I'm not crazy about the idea of not completing albums – seems a cheat somehow. But there's just no way I could subject myself to this for another forty-odd minutes, and I doubt I'd have anything good to say about the album were I to subject myself to such torture. So thanks, but no thanks.

Again, looks like my first instinct was correct and I should have left this well alone.

Rating: N/A

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