EVER

After the promotional tour of "Are You Sitting Comfortably?" and the subsequent departures of Paul Menel (vocals) and Tim Esau (bass), the continuity of IQ was very much compromised, to the point of programming farewell shows with Peter Nicholls for the occasion, which by those paradoxes of fate served for the former bandmates to reconnect and decide to give each other a second chance, finally embodied in "Ever", the band's fifth album (1993).

IQ, like a prodigal son, returns to the progressive parental lands with a proposal full of gloomy atmospheres and extensive instrumentation, which does not hide its proud Genesian influences and combines them with home- grown elements more in line with nineties sonorities, from the intense half-time of "The Darkest Hour" and Nicholls' heartfelt singing accompanied by Martin Orford's affable piano in its last section, the gloomy and hypnotic "Fading Sense" and the very thick bass of newcomer John Jowitt in the instrumental wall he builds in complicity with Orford's crisp keyboards and dramatised by the ambient chirping of birds, Its continuity in the stumbling animosity of "Out of Nowhere", until the piece called to be the backbone of the album, "Further Away" with its generous mileage and the good sensations transmitted by the arpeggiated and crystalline keyboards, mellotrons, the Wakemanian moog and flutes of Orford together with the singing of Nicholls, although at times it seems to exceed unnecessarily in its spacious margins, partly hindering its fluency.

And to ratify that the progressive winds guide the path of "Ever", "Leap of Faith" goes through threaded and placid constructions of seventies ambience in one of the best moments of the album, before giving way to the calm and conclusive "Came Down" and ending the work.

"Ever" was one of the solid foundations on which IQ's particular style would begin to solidify, consolidating it in their later works.

Very good.

4 stars