Lee in Limbo's The Limbo Record Review

Lee in Limbo’s

The

LIMBO

RECORD

REVIEW:

We’ve Got Five Years

(late 2011 to early 2017)

by Lee Edward McIlmoyle

Published by Lee Edward McIlmoyle

All Rights Reserved.

I also reserve the right to get cantankerous and obstreperous if I find out you didn’t go out and buy your own copy. I reserve the right to kick your dog if you nick one of my ideas or ‘borrow’ one of my characters… and wrap him in cling film. That’s icky. I reserve the right to be notified if you say or do something involving my toys. I won’t steal your idea. I’ve got too many of my own. Trust me. I reserve the right to demand dinner if you want to interview me or quote me for your articles or reviews. Don’t just copy/paste whole sections or chapters. Short pull quotes are good. I reserve the right to demand hugs at conventions and book signings. Hey, it’s my book. I can be demanding if I want to.

Book Design and Cover Art by CLEARvision Studios

Smashwords Edition

ISBN:

ISBN-13:

BLURB

Half a decade ago, the first stirrings of a true new shift in rock and roll music was felt, perhaps for the first time since 1991 with the Grunge Sound. Music both innovative and yet highly respectful of the great albums that had informed the Rock ‘n’ Roll of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. For one writer, it was a recapitulation for the many years of faithful devotion and careful scanning of rock magazines and increasingly tiny liner notes. His eyesight has not improved appreciably.

This volume collects the lion’s share of the in-depth album reviews written and posted with increasing rarity to the CLEARvision Studios website, where much of the author’s works were shared and vetted. There have been (some) corrections. There have been improvements and asides not seen in the original posts. And there may even be some new reviews, depending on how long it takes to get this volume formatted and edited.

Slip on your favourite pair of headphones, select your favourite beverage or substance of choice for contemplating the mysteries of life, and stroll with the author through fifty or so album reviews of music that may have, or at least should have, changed the face of popular music, if only rock radio were still as vibrant and meaningful as it was when we were kids.

Table of Contents

Foreword

2011:

Yes - Fly From Here

Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events

Barenaked Ladies (All In Good Time) vs Steven Page (Page One)

Levin Torn White - eponymous

Steve Hackett - Beyond The Shrouded Horizon

Steve Howe - Time

Steven Wilson - Grace For Drowning

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

The Memorials - eponymous

Blink-182 - Neighborhoods

Black Country Communion - 2

Whitesnake - Forevermore

Matthew Good - Lights of Endangered Species

Derek & the Dominos - Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970)

Jakszyk, Fripp & Collins - A Scarcity of Miracles

Thomas Dolby - A Map of the Floating City

Julian Lennon - Everything Changes

2012:

Van Halen - A Different Kind of Truth

Big Wreck - Albatross

Flying Colours - eponymous

Ian Anderson - Thick As A Brick II

The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet

Genesis - Calling All Stations (1997)

Spoons - Static In Transmission

Mike + the Mechanics - The Road

Rush - Clockwork Angels

Anthony Phillips - Field Day (2005)

The James Rocket - Launch

The Rest - See-Saw

MUSE - The 2nd Law

2012 Album Wrap-Up Review

2013:

Big Big Train - English Electric, pt 1 (2012)

Anthony Phillips and Andrew Skeet - Seventh Heaven (2012)

Marillion - Sounds That Cannot Be Made (2012)

Big Big Train - English Electric, pt 2

Sound of Contact - Dimensionaut

Lifesigns - eponymous

1980 Album Wrap-Up Review, pts 1-3

Genesis - Duke (1980)

2013 Album Wrap-Up Review

2014:

Top Progressive Rock Albums of the Last Twenty-Five Years

Transatlantic - Kaleidoscope

Big Wreck - Ghosts

Dave Kerzner - New World

2015-2017:

Supertramp - Crime of the Century (1974)

The James Rocket - We Are Here For You/Derby Girl EP

Invisible Men - eponymous

Jonathan Coulton - Artificial Heart (2011)

Squackett - A Life Within A Day (2012)

Toto - XIV (2015)

Soundgarden - King Animal (2012)

Yes - Fly From Here - Return Trip (2018)

Afterword

Other Titles

FOREWORD

This is a collection of rock and roll album reviews written and posted on-line (with some edits) between July of 2011 and June of 2017. This technically means the project is about six years old, but going by inception dates, we’re flying at just under five years of work, total. So it seemed as good a time as any to collect and reflect. I’d always intended to publish the lot in one volume, but about half way through, I got pretty busy with other projects, and just haven’t written as many as I’d hoped to have done by now.

So, in the interest of completionism, I’ve decided to tie a bow on this phase, and wait to see if I get the bug again and start a new volume in the coming years.

[FYI: As of this writing, there are already a few new reviews completed in the last week or so, plus a handful of others withheld from this collection due to money and time constraints. ~Ed, June 1st, 2018]

Lee Edward McIlmoyle,

Sipping coffee, listening to Anthony Phillips’ Field Day again, for fun, and trying to clear the decks and get back to work on the big sci-fi novel, before his newest idea threatens to strangle said novel in its sleep,

Monday, May 22nd, 2017,

Somewhere in Limbo (a quiet little apartment in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada).

YES – Fly From Here (2011) – an album review

tl;dr Version: You had me at the word ‘Yes’.

‘Splain, Lucy Version: The first studio album released in a decade by one of the preeminent progressive rock bands of all time, signifying both a return to form and, interestingly enough, a repudiation of the notion long held by many purist Yes fans that the 1980 Drama album has no real place in the Yes canon. This one clinches it, folks.

Boring Version: Today marks the triumphant return of Yes to record stores across North America. If that sounds like the very textbook definition of Unlikely (or Unwanted), then you’re going to find this review surprising.

This album not only returns Steve Howe, Chris Squire and Alan White, the musical backbone of Yes for most of its 40+ year history, to record shelves, but it also reunites them with two of the most contentious and least appreciated former members of Yes, Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, otherwise known as The Buggles.

For those few fans of the band who hold a special place in their hearts for the strange offspring that was born of this one-off union (myself included, truth be told), this album is precisely what you have been secretly hoping for all these years*. And when you consider the history of a number of the tracks, including the title track**, it’s not so surprising that the album should sound as if it could have been just as easily been titled ‘Drama, Act II’.

HISTORY LESSON

Without delving too deeply into the history of the band (hopefully… yeah right), let’s just say that, for a few years in the late 70s, the classic Yes line-up was put on indefinite hiatus by the departure of both Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman, which left Messrs. Howe, Squire and White with an incomplete–and rather lackluster–album, wondering how they were going to pay the Everest-like bar tab.

Unbeknown to them, pop wonder twins Horn and Downes, fresh off their hit song ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’, were looking for a home for a Yes-like track they’d written that somehow didn’t fit their emerging style. Daring the unthinkable, they took their demo around to the Yes studio to see if their heroes would be interested in rerecording it.

The three remaining Yes-men were impressed enough to take a big chance on the duo, and drafted the young men into helping them write and record an entire new album. Yes at first deceived the boys into believing that Jon and Rick would be returning to the studio in a few days/weeks/months. By the time they figured out what had really happened, they found themselves dues-paying members of Yes, rehearsing for the upcoming tour of their latest album, which, curiously enough, still didn’t include the track they’d brought to Yes in the first place.

Drama was a fascinating mixture of Yes at its most primal, matched with the edgy freshness of one of the most successful pop acts of the day. Old school fans have repeatedly dismissed the album as an aberration, but three years before the birth of Owner of a Lonely Heart (a track Horn was largely responsible for making Rabin bring to the band, and thus pop music history), this was the best chance Yes had of continuing into the turbulent 80s.

That the tour itself proved to be something of a commercial and critical failure (only comparable to their previous tours; the sales figures weren’t nearly as bad as they were made out to be, and would make modern bands blush with envy)***, is a sad testament to an album that was perhaps a few years too early, and never really got its chance to shine.

The abandoned track would next be expanded on slightly by the Buggles, but failed to appear on their next album, which proved to be their somewhat acrimonious last. Geoff became the keyboardist for a moderately successful rock outfit called Asia or some such thing. Trevor, on the other hand, went on to produce numerous gold- and platinum-selling, quintessential 80s acts, such as The Pet Shop Boys, The Art of Noise, and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. That, plus co-producing a hit album or two for Trevor Rabin-era Yes, so he made out alright.

Fast forward to 2008, where classic Yes vocalist Jon Anderson has been temporarily waylaid by a serious bought of lung illness that very nearly proved fatal. In what has proven to be the least popular line-up change in decades, the remainder of Yes elected to hire a new vocalist for the 40th anniversary tour and carry on without its spiritual leader.

Benoît David, 45-year-old former Yes tribute band vocalist and member of Canadian progressive rock act Mystery, has a strong, bell-tone-clear, slightly incandescent voice, not unlike a fine amalgamation of Jon Anderson and Trevor Horn at his best, without the perhaps-requisite English accent.

He’s not what one would call a true replacement for Jon, which is especially clear in the writing credits for the new album, where his name appears only once, on a band composition that also features credits for Horn and Downes, as well as Strawbs keyboardist Oliver Wakeman (eldest son of Rick Wakeman, and older brother to Ozzy Osbourne/Black Sabbath keyboardist, Adam Wakeman), who was more or less asked to step aside for returning Downes. David might not be a particularly experienced songwriter, despite his years, but after a decade of waiting and writing for Squire and Howe, he’s not really needed in that capacity, at least for this project. We’ll see how he fares next outing. [Actually, we won’t; due to illness that affected his singing voice, Benoît David was replaced by Jon Davison, former lead vocalist of Glass Hammer. As well, there is talk of a version of the Fly From Here album sung entirely by Trevor Horn, which will see release some time soon. ~Ed. 2017/06/18]

What is clear is that he is practically a godsend to Trevor Horn, who finally has someone with Anderson’s range and power to sing his (Horn’s) Yes opus at long last.

And that’s essentially what the new album is: a showcase for the final realization of a piece born over thirty years ago at last finding its rightful home on a proper Yes studio album.

THE REVIEW

You thought I’d never get to this, didn’t you? Oh ye of little faith.

Yes is back. Really and truly back. For how long is anyone’s guess, and I won’t belittle their effort by dredging up the bad blood between Yes and former members Anderson or Wakeman the Younger. If nothing else can be said for Fly From Here, the album’s mere existence justifies everything that has come before. But as far as I’m concerned, much can and must to be said.

As suggested earlier, this album could very easily be called Drama II. Fortunately, Yes doesn’t do sequels, but this album sounds like someone (probably Chris) slipped down to the wine cellar and decanted a lost bottle of Beaujolais labeled ‘1980’.

The title track consists of five separate parts of varying length and style, which add up to almost precisely 24 minutes of music. Not precisely a fully-formed Yes epic in the classic sense, but a song cycle that tells a proper story, which we haven’t really had much of in Yes history, and certainly not one so clearly depicted. It’s not a wonder they were able to create such an evocative and narrative-driven video for their first single. Refusing to give away the story itself, I will say that it tells an intriguing and cinematic tale of life and loss cloaked in metaphors of flight.

The Overture starts off with a quiet little piano figure and then crashes into a medium-high tempo instrumental rock riff just this side of the progressive metal horizon, and then essays a few motifs from the rest of the piece, as any good overture should, without overstaying its welcome or giving away all the goodies. I could have handled a bigger helping, but it’s probably just as well that they saved some for the rest.

We Can Fly is the opening single, and after hearing the original version Trevor and Geoff concocted back in the 80s, I can honestly say that this needed to be recorded by Yes. Steve’s guitar adds a dimension not realized on the original demo, and Chris more than adequately reworks Trevor’s bass part and makes it his own. The real standout for me here is the melding of Benoit’s voice with Chris’s; Benoit is covering Trevor’s original vocal melody but giving it both added dynamics and warmth that Trevor fell just short of. Truly, one of Chris’s best vocal harmonies in years. Aside from that, it is a nearly faithful recreation of the original.

Sad Night at the Airfield is also a vocal piece, and also a rerecording of a Buggles effort, the second half of the expanded number they demoed after leaving Yes. The backing vocals are also in good effect here, but Benoit is given the room to nail Trevor’s original performance, with Chris singing echoes in the distance. It’s a very moody, atmospheric piece, quite unlike what we’ve heard from Yes in most of the last three decades, save perhaps the ABWH album, ironically enough, though perhaps not surprisingly so, given that Geoff and Steve (of course) were involved in the writing on that album. It also puts me in mind of Jon and Vangelis. Strange how that works.

Madman at the Screens opens with a Mellotron pad that then revisits the explosive opening riff from the overture, with Benoit and Chris exchanging lines of what begins to sound like a rather involved mini drama that probably wouldn’t be out of place in the next James Bond film, if one ever comes to light. I hear little motifs that suggest past numbers, particularly from the mid 70s era, but so tightly wound and directed that you never feel as if you’re being fan serviced. As the first completely original song in this piece, it evokes the best elements of their classic prog rock excesses, but with an eye on the clock that immediately puts me in mind of ‘Machine Messiah’ from Drama. I also suspect that the lion’s share of the plot gets told in this section, but I haven’t broken down the lyrics yet, so I can’t be sure.

Bumpy Ride starts as an instrumental excursion that again reminds us of past classic delights, but with a curiously light heart. It briefly segues back to the atmospheric tone of the preceding track, but then returns to the almost too-cute instrumental motif, which dovetails into…

We Can Fly Reprise, which hammers home the anthemic quality of the opening single, and reminds us that pop music can be shaped to serve the purposes of progressive rock quite ably, if you forgive the lack of 13/8. Over all, a masterful piece that I find myself playing over and over.

The very nice thing about this piece is that it hangs well together as a whole, but also serves up three perfectly acceptable singles, which is a rarity for a prog rock epic in any decade. It also promises that we may actually hear some if not all of this piece in concert in the not-too-distant future, which would be a nice change from the last several concerts I attended, expecting to hear my favourite new tracks, only to be treated to yet another rendition of Roundabout (which I love, but really, enough already).

The Man You Always Wanted Me To Be is a nice acoustic-driven number which distinguishes itself as perhaps the finest pop song Chris Squire has ever co-written (with Gerard Johnson and Simon Sessler) and sang lead on. A proper (sugar-free) love song, very much in the vein of certain pop songs the band wrote on their most recent previous albums, while attempting, I often suspected, to capture their own version of the Trevor Rabin magic, but here most successfully. If radio weren’t what it is these days, I’d be very hopeful of hearing this as a second or third single. It also hearkens back to some pleasant riffing from classic Yes tunes of yore, without borrowing from anything too obvious, and gives us another lovely blending of voices.

Life on a Film Set is another acoustic-driven piece that gives Benoit a chance to evoke some strong themes in a lower register, with a lyric that sounds very like things written on Drama, but sounding completely unlike anything Yes has recorded before, which is perhaps unsurprising, given that it’s another Horn/Downes piece in disguise. About midway through the song, it transforms into something much more Yes-like that very definitely belongs to the Drama era; a deft combination of light and shadow, and all the more lovely for it.

Hour of Need is actually a shortened version of the full piece that those lucky Japanese have been enjoying for a couple of weeks now. It’s a Steve Howe folk-pop composition as only he can write them, recalling ghosts of Turn of the Century and certain songs he’s turned in for Asia in the last few years. He even breaks out a battery of acoustic instruments, while Geoff does his very best tasteful Rick Wakeman synth imitation (EDITOR’S NOTE: This was in all likelihood Oliver Wakeman playing, rather than Geoff. I was not previously aware that any of his work had remained on the final album. Nevertheless, very much in his father’s vein, and nicely done). It’s quite lovely, and for my money, proof positive (if you needed it) that he is not merely a gunslinger with no pop sensibilities or lyrical style to call his own.

Solitaire is a simple little guitar instrumental, demonstrating that Steve hasn’t forgotten his first love, classical guitar. It’s quite pretty, with a rustic quality that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on The Yes Album or Fragile. And while it’s been a long time since a Yes album featured a piece like this, and though I’ve said repeatedly that this album is very much in the vein of Drama, nevertheless, it doesn’t feel at all out of place here.

Into The Storm, the band composition, crashes into life with a veritable kitchen sink of keyboard and guitar sounds, and a choral verse lyric that sounds like it could have been a lost track from the Going For the One sessions. Extremely charming and interesting by turns, and yet refusing to resort to pop cliché. It switches down to a moody bridge that definitely sounds more Drama-era, and then goes back to that main riff that seems to elegantly sum up their entire career. I still haven’t picked apart all of the lyrics, but it does seem to suggest revelations about some of the things the band has been through, though not in any noticeably biographical manner. A classic Yes instrumental passage leads into an outro that again probably wouldn’t have been out of place on Going For the One, save that they reprise the title track’s chorus lyric as an off-kilter outro, tying the whole album together as it sails off into some Roger Dean landscape.

SUMMARY

I’d hate to resort to hyperbole and thus disqualify my efforts to give you some idea of what you’re missing if you don’t buy this album, but I have to say, I haven’t enjoyed a Yes album quite this much in a while, and I am inordinately fond of most of their recordings of the last thirty or so years since Drama first hit the shelves. You may not remember Drama as being one of the great Yes albums, but I do, and this record truly does succeed in capturing that magic without trying too hard to be a direct sequel or carbon copy.

I’m going to go on record as saying that this is my Album of the Year. The year is half over, and I seriously doubt I’ll hear anything that quite reaches the same peaks for me, even though Ian Thornley promised me a new, Big Wreck-tinged album for the fall. As much as I miss Big Wreck, I’ve been waiting for this album a lot longer.

I don’t feel the slightest bit of conflict over enjoying this album so much, despite the bad blood between the band and their former leader. Jon Anderson has a few tricks up his sleeve at any rate. Stay tuned for next year’s Album of the Year review, when his new project with Rick Wakeman and Trevor Rabin comes to light [Well, it will still have to wait until 2018. ~Ed].

FINAL VERDICT: Buy this album. Or, you know, come over to my place and let me play it at you, while my wife will still let me play it around the house at all.

Lee.

* I’m thinking particularly of one young woman I used to know, who once expressed a heartfelt wish for Jon Anderson to sing some of the Drama-era tracks in concert; a wish that was never fulfilled. Hopefully she’ll get to hear the songs performed live this time around. *waves to Vicky, wherever she is*

** the first proper 20+ minute epic piece recorded by Yes since Trevor Rabin’s prog masterpiece, ‘Endless Dream’ (NOTE: Actually, ‘Endless Dream’ only rings in at slightly less than 16 minutes; interestingly enough, that probably means ‘The Gates of Delirium’ was the last proper 20+ minute studio epic) that actually makes , on the much-maligned 1994 album Talk, though ‘That, That Is’ and ‘Mind Drive’, both of the ‘Keystudio’ sessions in the late 90s, came pretty close.

*** an eventuality that helped drive bassist/vocalist Trevor Horn out of the limelight and more-or-less permanently behind the mixing desk, barring studio performances on a number of his producing projects. Always nice to keep your hand in.

DREAM THEATER - A DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS - a music review

NOTE: For this review, I’m going to borrow the review format from a different blog.

tl;dr Version: DT is dead. Long Live DT.

‘Splain, Lucy Version: If you thought Dream Theater were in trouble without Mike Portnoy, you might still have a point, but you’d have trouble arguing that they can’t make a fine record without him at the helm.

Boring Version: In 2010, after the fairly successful triple CD studio release, Black Clouds and Silver Linings, a shock went through the prog metal community when they learned that, after twenty-five years, master drummer and guiding force Mike Portnoy had left Dream Theater, and many people were convinced that the story would grind to a sad halt if he weren’t still in the fold. Some worried that Mike would never get decent work again, which is patent nonsense, as he’s currently in two top-notch super groups and working on numerous other side projects, proving the old adage that a change is as good as a rest.

And as for Dream Theater, well, there weren’t too many people that thought DT couldn’t continue without Mike, but I think the general consensus was that they’d have trouble replacing everything that Mike brought to the table, and that the gaps would be noticeable. Truly, the man is a force to be reckoned with, but with the addition of Mike Mangini, one department is covered, in that Mike’s chops and playing have filled the breach admirably. Musically, they haven’t lost their ability to pull together their disparate influences and create fascinating instrumentals and catchy melodies to hang them on.

And their public presence, though perhaps not quite as coherent and amiable, has increased to fill the gap that MP left in his wake. Posts from Jordan Rudess and John Petrucci are at least as ubiquitous as Mike’s ever were, though he maintains his own presence online, which has a funny way of demonstrating the difference between their communication styles. Jordan is project oriented and John is definitely a gearhead, so their status updates and such aren’t quite as personal as Mike’s. I imagine this will change with time.

I’d also hoped to hear more from John Myung, which I have to confess I may have missed. And it will be nice to hear more from Mike Mangini, whose interview segments in the audition videos were the highlight of the series. One person I must confess to not being interested in hearing from is James LaBrie, which is probably doing him a disservice. Somehow, every comment I’ve ever read or heard from him gives me the feeling that he’s someone I wouldn’t get along with, which is unfortunate, because he is an awesome vocalist whose skills I deeply respect and admire.

The storytelling aspects of the album have become perhaps a little more pedestrian in subject matter—if vampires and angels can be called pedestrian—but the lyrics and especially the music are as solid and evocative as they’ve ever been.

Musically, they sound just like the best moments of Dream Theater, perhaps even more so than on their previous album, which was to my mind a deliberate attempt to draw together all of their sounds and styles onto one album, a formula that served them best on Octavarium, an album I still love just a little too much. What? Don’t look at me like that.

I’d say the one thing that bothers me about the album is that it sounds just a little too much like Dream Theater, which isn’t much of an indictment given that’s who they are, and nobody really wanted them to sound like somebody else. What I must confess is, I was hoping for perhaps a few more surprises. However, that’s just going on surface impressions with this album. There are little stylistic shifts here and there, and particularly in the production stages, it’s a very fresh, rich sounding album, which happily lacks the one element I had truly never enjoyed; the throat screaming of nu metal fame.

Now, let’s look at the songs themselves:

On The Backs of Angels opens with a lovely guitar figure complimented by some keys and a smattering of effects and bass notes, with hints of percussion, but over all, it doesn’t start to feel like a song until the keys and drums come in, which takes us right back to Images and Words without actually quoting the opening of Pull Me Under. It’s just that it sounds like Pull Me Under part II, which isn’t such a bad place to start an album if you want to consolidate your stance as the band that made all of that music. The lyrics don’t start until 2:30 minutes in, and the song relentlessly draws together those Iron Maiden-meets-Saga chops that were ever-present on Images and Words. The vocals are actually a bit more polished, but certainly as brooding, and the percussive keys are a nice nod to Kevin Moore. The piano intro to the instrumental gives us something of the feel of A Change of Seasons, which of course was also from that early period. So basically, this song is prototypical DT, and though it doesn’t move the goal posts anywhere new, it certainly reestablishes their claim to the legacy of the band, with or without MP.

Build me Up, Break Me Down opens with the slightly affected industrial tone of a NIN number that quickly turns into Tool or Korn with synth strings, but with that insistent Trent Reznor rhythm buried just below the surface throughout the verse, which only disappears during the sweeping DT-style chorus and the slightly more modern DT bridge. James essays his own take on throat screaming, which is much less guttural and more histrionic, but perhaps far more effective and certainly more appropriate to the style of their music than I ever thought MP’s take was. Thick strings end the piece on an almost Mellotron note, which I find a nice transition to…

Lost Not Forgotten, which opens with desert sands and horses retreating, followed by a piano figure that reminds us of motifs from Metropolis pt II, and then the sky opens up and the motif actually gets stronger, like a mini overture to Metropolis Pt III, only, you know, not. Because it’s not. Just so you know. The guitars and keys and bass chasing each other around before the main crunchy guitar riff kicks in is a nice touch. Then the lyric arrives, and we’re definitely not in Metropolis pt III, because they have a a new story, which I’m still trying to figure out. It sounds like they’ve taken a page from Maiden’s playbook for fantasy storytelling, although with more of an Arabian Nights sensibility, which is reflected in some of the little Middle Eastern figures that creep in here and there. However, to these ears, it’s Metropolis pt III, and I’m sticking to that. There’s a really nice bit of business with the keyboard solo that sounds just a little bit like Sherinian’s contributions to Falling Into Infinity or A Change of Seasons, as well.

This Is The Life opens with a short guitar riff that sounds like it was written for piano and then transposed, and then it quickly lands on a more traditional DT opener, that quickly retreats back to, you guessed it, that same opening figure, now played on piano, and soon joined by a rather pastoral DT in Kansas mode. It gives James a chance to do that breathy thing with his ballad performances that probably hasn’t been heard from enough in recent albums. It’s a rather lovely piece over all, and I’m having trouble placing what it reminds me of most. Perhaps it feels most like Queensryche’s Silent Lucidity, though saying that might give you the wrong impression. The point is, it’s a rather elegiac number with some really nice lyrics that would probably sound more natural at the end of a concept album.

Bridges In The Sky opens with a rather rude, didgeridoo-sounding yawp noise and some effects and percussion that give way to a rather Gregorian-sounding mass choir, which ends with the same throaty primitive noise, and finally goes into a very thrashy figure straight off of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence or perhaps Train of Thought. I suffer from that particular disease that makes it difficult for me to appreciate the thrashy elements as much as I like the progressive elements of prog metal. The chorus is certainly huge enough, and James sounds great here doubled in that way we heard a lot of on Metropolis II. Basically, except for the thrash figure, it just sounds like huge DT with perhaps a few too many banks of keyboard pads, but the instrumental is nice, and slips into those middle eastern scales that made Metropolis II so much more exotic. They go into something closer to a Deep Purple vibe, interspersed with the middle eastern scales, and then return to that massive chorus, and head thrash their way to the finish line, with that barbaric yawp noise ending the piece.

Outcry opens with a bit of a NIN vibe as well, just before the huge metal orchestra falls out of the sky, like something off of the latest Europe album, which to my ears was them proving they liked what DT had done. However, keeping it from being just a wall of guitars, they return to the NIN feel, with a number of interesting instrument effects we haven’t really heard from the band before leading to the verse. There is a second part in here that slows to a Pink Floyd pace, only sounding nothing like Floyd. This would be, to my ears, the most tonally adventurous number so far on the album, but they hedge their bets with a lot of DT-standard wall of sound tropes, the peculiar effects being more of a diversion from the standard sounds. More Middle Eastern scales in the instrumental section. These never get old for me, so that’s not a put-down. Some Zappaesque structures to the second part of the instrumental, which is a nice touch, given that I’ve mostly associated the Zappa influence to MP. The third pass instrumental section has some slightly Mahavishnu Orchestra touches, though it’s probably also fair to say there’s some Dixie Dregs in there. The fourth pass—a bridge, really—is very much a smooth jazz instrumental with piano and John Myung’s bass featured, and then it slips into a vocal section. Once more dipping into the DT catalogue of huge verse riffs, and a bridge section that feels a little bit like post-Gabriel era Genesis on steroids, which proves to be the end of the number.

Far From Heaven is a short interlude that opens with a very pretty piece of relaxed piano chording and some cello, and then James slips in with another one of his seemingly effortless ballad vocals. Live strings make this song sound incredibly romantic. Previous efforts in this genre have usually sounded a little derivative of Elton John or the like, but this is rather pleasantly devoid of obvious finger prints. It’s not impossible to find an influence, but it’s mostly just a rather lovely piece of love song with strings and piano.

Breaking All Illusions picks up the pace with a rather progressive sounding opening that has all the tonal figures of Blue Oyster Cult playing in a time signature they probably couldn’t handle. It leads into a rather peculiar, muted verse making full use of Myung’s bass and LaBrie’s heavily effected voice, interspliced with some movie sample or other that I can’t identify, giving it a Kevin Moore-Awake feel, and another of those huge major/minor key chorus sections that leads rapidly into a very choppy bridge piece with vocals in a funny time signature I’ll need to listen to more carefully to count out properly. The huge chorus returns, and then a a rather fascinating instrumental with splashes of medieval music, metal, hammond, Rush into Yes from two separate eras, a section that sounds a bit like King Crimson in quiet mode, and then a bluesy jazz guitar solo like something from David Gilmour or Carlos Santana, and finally returning to DT-land via Trevor Rabin. Russian scales now! Whee! The next bit, still playing in that slightly Russian tonality, uses those keyboard sounds that take us back to Metropolis again. Basically, this piece is very, very busy, and the chorus is huge without being too sweet. Bridge to the end, big finish, what do you mean that’s not the end of the album?

Beneath The Surface opens with a dripping tap and then strings and acoustic guitar introduce a very lovely ballad, James in full effect, and the hook, which makes me think this must have been written by John Myung, the master of these sorts of huge minor key pop melodies. I could be wrong there, but man, does it ever have that Myung touch. You can understand why they saved this until last. It’s perhaps a bit too pretty to be anywhere else on the album without getting lost. Jordan breaks out (what my ear says is) an Arp Odyssey sound for a brief instrumental passage, and then James’ voice doubles for a bridge that leads to just him and the guitar. Whoops, James goes high, and the strings return. This number is just gorgeous from front to back. What a lovely closer.

SUMMARY

Well, that’s that for the songs. Just leaves me a few minutes to sum up. This is probably the most accessible album they’ve written since Falling Into Infinity, and like that album, they don’t shy away from the crunchy, progressive moments, so much as let the soft side of DT show through here and there. It’s still not their most adventurous album, but then, that really wasn’t in the cards for this album at any rate. This album was about consolidation. The closest antecedent I can think of is A Trick of the Tail, by Genesis shortly after Peter Gabriel left and the press was writing eulogies for the band. This is DT’s Trick of the Tail, and while it may sound like a plus-perfect version of your favourite DT moments, it’s not quite as derivative as it first seems. More importantly, it gets better with repeated listenings, which is an important ingredient for any album in my collection these days.

I hope some part of my review was helpful to you. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading.

Eddie.

THE LADIES vs PAGE - cage match review

tl;dr Version: Cage Match!!! Five men walk in… and only five men walk out! But who will bear the most scars‽

‘Splain, Lucy Version: In the annals of history, there have been few things that have more effectively ended the careers of groups of successful musicians than the dreaded Solo Album. Many bands have tried, but very few have survived. Once a strong songwriter figures out they can make music with or without the band, there’s very little that can keep them down on the farm, especially if they’ve been meeting with resistance to their ideas where there was less before. This morning, we will examine the two most recent albums of one of Canada’s favourite exports, The Barenaked Ladies.

Boring Version: Okay, for those of you who have been living under a rock, or were perhaps born after rock music discovered Prozac, the Barenaked Ladies have been for most of their career a five piece pop rock ensemble, noted for close harmonies, warm-ear-catching arrangements and idiosyncratic, and clever, sometimes comedic lyrics. What few had guessed from listening to the Gordon album (or the Yellow Tape if you go back that far) is that they would eventually see the growth of not one, not two, but five unique songwriting voices, and one world class rock drummer who doesn’t get nearly enough credit… or