| The
Review |
There are times where a band gets saddled with an association
that they may or may not be totally comfortable with. You
know what I mean, bands that get labeled as sounding like
ELP or Genesis or in the case of Detroit’s progressive hard
rockers Tiles, Rush. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and
for the band in question, Tiles, they seem to have embraced
the association. Although I must admit that you’d be hard
pressed to draw a lot of direct links to Rush by listening
to Tiles latest offering Window Dressing. **
This four-piece outfit consists of Mark Evans (drums),
Chris Herin (guitar), Paul Rarick (vocals), and Jeff Whittle
(bass). Tiles are one of those hard working road bands and
they have a long list of performances to back it up touring
or playing in support of the likes of Spock’s Beard, Dream
Theater and Fates Warning, to name a few. And as is always
the case that live gigging really manifests itself in Tiles
ability to perform together. Kind of a bonus for the band,
are the production skills of Terry Brown. ***
I said at the outset that Tiles are a progressive Hard
Rock band and I intentionally avoided the prog-metal tag for
good reason. Sometimes they get very close but by and large
the music here, while guitar-heavy avoids the wall-of-crunch
that can become so prevalent with the prog-metal set. Here
the compositions tend to breathe a little more without the
sonic assault. The CD opens with the seventeen-minute epic
title track “Window Dressing” that goes through four of five
different themes to set the tone for the rest of the CD. There
are other tracks such as “Tear-Water Tea” that are more acoustic
and demonstrate the bands ability to work successfully outside
the hard-rock confines. This track and the instrumental that
follows it “Stop Gap” feature Discipline’s Matthew Parmenter
on violin. In fact Window Dressing has three shorter instrumentals
where Tiles are able to display yet another side to their
compositional skills. The tracks tend to fall in the four-five
minute range and any time-or-tempo shifts are pretty subtle
with the band relying more on density or arrangements to create
the compositions diversity. In fact listening to “Unicornicopia”
makes one want to actually check to see if it’s the same band.
Throughout the CD it’s clear that the band work within the
song format with an emphasis on working within the melody
rather than simply running off in all directions at once.
Window Dressing being the fourth release, Tiles clearly
show a certain maturity both in terms of composition and performance.
For fans of progressive rock with a harder edge this is a
no-brainer, Tiles are easily one of the top-ten bands performing
in this style. Word is, as I write this they’re in the midst
of finishing up their new CD set for release in early 2007.
Till then, if you haven’t yet done so pick up a copy of Window
Dressing. For those moments when something a little stronger
is required, Tiles clearly fills the bill. ***
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