SOFT FFOG

I had to put something in print before I review the band's new 2025 release, Focus, as I've known of this album since it was recommended to me back in 2022. Right off the bat I have to take issue with Scott Shreky' suggestion that this band sounds like a cross between the Mahavishnu Orchestra and The Mars Volta. I'm not even sure I would consider this Jazz-Rock Fusion (the category PA has assigned them) were it not for the instrumental jam structures to their music. To me this has more in common with straight rock and blues rock of the late 1960s, early 1970s, and the blues rock revival of the 1980s: Rush, Mahogany Rush, Stevie Ray Vaughn, The sound and technique of the band's dominant instrumentalist, the heavily-distorted electric guitar shredder, sounds to me more like Alex Lifeson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Jimi Hendrix than Mahavishnu John McLaughlin. None of these musicians sound particularly virtuosic: they have some skill and speed but very little diversity and variability. Both the drummer and the guitarist, in particular, seem to be locked into one style only--and they do not "mesh" or entrain very well together. The keyboardist has talent but the exposition of his skills and diversity is diminished by the fairly simplistic compositions that he is playing over. I mean: anybody can jam! And I definitely get the feeling that the many instances in which the musicians "spill over" into errant notes has nothing to do with intention or Coltrane- and Monk-like adventures into Debussy scales making; they are simply mistakes. And bass player is there but rarely makes himself distinctive--which can be a good thing--but in the context of these jam-oriented songs methinks his role has been assigned as metronomic companion to the militaristic drummer. As for the music, I don't dislike it but I feel no lasting urge to return to it. My hope is that in the three years the quartet have had to work on their skills and compositional vision the next album (the afore-mentioned Focus) will yield considerable improvements and advancements.

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