AS GOOD AS GOLD

Pendragon decided to follow up The Masquerade Overture with this EP, much like they followed up their masterpiece The Window of Life with the Fallen Dreams and Angels EP. In this case, I don't think the EP is such good value compared to Fallen Dreams - that one was an all-original collection of songs, at least, and all the songs in question seemed reasonably well-developed.

By comparison, this EP leads off with a three and a half minute edit of the title track. By carving out most of the more interesting bits from the album version, the edit leaves the track seeming irritatingly repetitive. Closing track A Million Miles Away feels like an intro in search of a song.

On the other hand, the two fully-developed tracks - Bird of Paradise and Midnight Running - are quite good, and they account for over half the EP's running time. It's fun and charming, but it's just not worth the effort to track this one down as a distinct release; if you must hear the non-album tracks, the 2013 Madfish reissue of The Masquerade Overture had them as bonus tracks, and that's probably easier to find on balance.