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Review:
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This brand new album with the America outfit follows
the premise of what would Pan, the Greek God of Nature,
make of the mess we, the human race, have made of the planet.
If the classic early 70’s Genesis prog line-up had never
split up, they might have ended up doing an album like this
after listening to Tubular Bells and smoking funny substances.
Their last album Pyre of Dreams was a collection of classic
rock songs, but this one is made up of a series of brief
musical passages linked together, some sung, but many purely
instrumental. Keyboarder Jim Waugaman has a voice that veers
from Peter Gabriel to Greg Lake in style, but sadly the
lovely Ashley Peer is rather underused, you have to wait
until the last few tracks before she gets a decent run out,
even though she is supposed to be the lead singer. I must
warn you dear reader that this is not easy to listen to,
it flits back and forth between classic prog with strange
time signatures, to delicate twinklings, to meanderings,
to weirdness, with not a traditional verse chorus song in
sight. This poor old reviewer had real trouble keeping track
of where he was, I had to keep a beady eye on the song number,
which made it a very disorienting listening experience,
especially as some themes kept reoccurring. There is nothing
wrong with creating a continuous piece of music, but it
has to have direction and purpose, to take you on a musical
journey, but at times this appeared to me aimless and confused,
as if the engineer had dropped the tapes and had got them
mixed up. Even the longer songs towards the end have problems,
‘The Tears of Serene’ starts promisingly enough with Ashley,
but then it just wanders off without her, and the end of
Erato’s Pulse is simply painful. Some of it even sounds
like the backing tapes with the solo’s missing, it’s like
one of those movies you keep watching expecting something
to happen, but it never does. The album is either very brave
or very foolhardy, depending on you viewpoint, and from
chatting with prog pals the jury is still out. I would say
approach with caution, do not expect Mostly Autumn, and
have a very open mind. As this is not a specialist prog
site, I have approached this review from the viewpoint of
writing it for the benefit of readers who like their prog
but are not aficionados, and this factor is reflected in
the score. If you want something far easier on the ear,
have a look at their previous effort. It is available from
all decent prog outlets, a bewildered and bewildering 7.5
out of 10.
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