V

V, the fifth album by Spock's Beard is a fairly easy album to get into. It sounds much more 'radio friendly' then I'm use to. At times I'm even left with the thought that some of the music is 'pop', but this is mostly due to the harmonies of the vocals. Luckily, most of the more 'poppy' moments are found on the shorter songs on the album; which I skip after I listened to them quite a number of times and just could not get into them. This is just not my taste in music, but I'm very glad the band opened and closed the album with exceptional songs.

'At the end of the day' is a very 'nice' song. I say nice, not overly as a complement, nor is it an insult. It's just 'nice', like a school boy who offers his apple to a girl who dropped her own, but at too young an age to be looking for anything more then a smile from her. That, in essence is this song for me. It's nice. It lifts you up on a bad day and reminds you of all those small things that make you smile. One of those 'feel good' songs music needs more of with the ever rising depressing songs. I'll give 'Spock's Beard' codos for that. No matter how bad a day has been for me, I can't help but feel uplifted by this song.

I do like the sound the song starts off with, very nice harmonies with the synth. This band sure does like their harmonies. The transitions and different moods this song presents is a treat. They seem to be stretching they're legs to get ready for the rest of the album. At first, I thought coming back to the beginning of the song to finish it was a little much, and they should have let it drift off. I felt as though the music had led me to a really great place, only to really realize I've gone in a cercal. But, after I let the song really sink in I realized it wasn't such a bad thing, and started to enjoy it. At the end of the day, it's a solid song.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the next four songs, but I'll get back to that later. Let's just do what I do when I pop this into the stereo and click 'next' a few times until we hear the hum of 'The Great Nothing.'

Now we have a redeeming progressive song. My old theory of music is, no matter what you put the listener through, it has to work out in the end. This song does that, with neat little sound bites along the way. I love the sounds these guys produce throughout the song. This is a memorable 20+ minuet song with a very good structure, great deliverance, and a concept behind it that I can sit down and think about. Basically, in what I can device from the song, it's about someone trying to make a name for themselves in society with an idea of his .in an overly simplified nut shell. I like the song in that each time I listen to it something new comes out.

So, here's my rating: Two great longer songs sandwiched between four less then enjoyable sorter songs. I think the band spent not enough time really developing those middle songs. Now where have I seen a layout like this before? It looks oddly fermiler like .well any other album produced in this millennium with a strong longer song starting it off and a very powerful 20+ minuet song. Now, true, with most albums with an epic ending song, there's not a whole lot you can do with the album structurally. You'd be crazy to put the epic in the middle of the album; the beginning is questionable, but I'd rather see a song like 'The Great Nothing" at the end of an album then in front. And most of the time, this lay out works very well, like in "Dark Matter" by IQ; but some times, it falls short such as "Milliontown" by Frost*. The difference between these two: time spent on the songs between the first and last.

My final rating is three stars. At the end of the day, it's better to have two great songs and four skippable songs, then a great nothing.

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