The
current line-up for this album, Sounds
That Can’t Be Made, is Steve Hogarth (Vocals), Steve Rothery (Elec/Ac
guitars), Ian Mosely (Drums/Percussion), Pete Trewavas (bass) and Mark Kelly
(keyboards).
My
Marillion “moments” have been with the earlier version of the band, circa the
time of the hits Kayleigh and Incommunicado etc. This later version of the band
I am not as conversant with, and I was eagerly looking forward to listening to
this new album, especially with some of the comments that have already been
made on the release.
There
are eight tracks on Sounds That Can’t Be
Made, which has a total running time of around 74 minutes. The shortest
track on the album is “Invisible Ink,” track 6, which clocks in at 5:47 minutes
and the album’s opening track, “Gaza,” which runs to a staggering 17:30
minutes.
Having
listened to the album several times, each track is very interesting, but my
standout tracks, at the moment, are “Gaza” (17:30), track 4, “Power” (6:06) and
track 3, “Pour My Love” (6:02). The opening track, “Gaza,” is an amazingly
atmospheric and emotional “tour de force.” The lyrics are very hard-hitting and
the sudden shifts in musical emphasis serve to accentuate this. It is a very complex track which shows the
terrific skills of all the members of the band, but I do feel that the track is
a little on the long side. Every time I have listened to this particular track,
and I have also played it on my radio show, I felt that when the track reached
around 13 minutes and the amazing guitar work of Steve Rothery appeared, it was
the time to start to draw the track to an end. The extra time remaining, I
found, detracted from what had gone before and is also why I haven’t used the
word “epic” to describe “Gaza.”
Track
3,”Pour My Love,” is a very gentle piano based track which is very relaxing and
the voice of Steve Hogarth sits very comfortably within the musical setting.
Terrific bass/drums hold the track tightly together and the superb guitar
motifs from Steve Rothery over the top of the track are excellent. Just beyond
the halfway point, Steve Rothery gets the chance to show just how good a
guitarist he is. Again, my small negative comment would be that “Pour My Love”
seems to outstay its welcome just a little and the whole feeling of the track
loses slightly because of this.
“Power”,
track 4, is a somewhat faster pace and again shows the band as a very tightly
knit unit. Steve Hogarth’s voice is again very good, but I do find his vocal
shifts at the end of some lines of the lyrics a bit distracting. There is a
terrific buildup of sound around the two thirds mark which “escorts” the song
towards the end and then drops away to let the track go out in a very gentle
manner.
Individually,
the 8 tracks on this album are very good, if slightly similar, and it means
that listening to one or two tracks at a time is excellent, but it is not the
sort of album that I would put on to listen to from start to finish at one
sitting .Atmospheric, and in many cases, emotion drenched, would be the words
that come to mind to describe the songs. So, to sum up, I didn’t find this
falling into the “need to buy” category, but found it terrific in small doses.
3.5/5 Stars
Key
Tracks: Gaza, Pour My Love, Power
Jim “The Ancient One” Lawson-MuzikReviews.com Staff
January 12, 2013
Tracks:
Gaza
Sounds
That Can’t Be Made
Pour
My Love
Power
Montreal
Invisible
Ink
Lucky
Man
The
Sky Above The Rain
|
No comments:
Post a Comment