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I barely know the band, but indeed the reviews for English Electric were so good that I had to buy the combo "English Electric, Full Power" (parts 1 and 2, plus a few new songs that were later released as an EP, which is not Wassail). However, I really loved this English Electric thing, with many memorable melodies that I loved... and one of the things that I thought was actually the opposite to what you thought from "The Underfall Yard" (which I actually haven't heard, so I don't know if I'll agree with you on that)... but on EE I felt that they used the prog elements in a very organic way, and they were used to suit the songs, without unnecesary prog elements and signature changes just to make it prog. Very nice and beautiful, I guess you should try it out and see if you agree with me.
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..at first. Genesis was likely my gateway drug into prog, and so since these guys apparently had a similar style, I thought, "why not?". So I decided to listen to The Underfall Yard's title track as I was in the mood for a good prog epic. Only problem was, it didn't feel like it was a band trying to make their own music, I found it was a band trying to make prog for the sake of being prog. A lot of the jams felt like mindless noodling and the sections of the song didn't have much of a flow to them, I found. I also found that there weren't very many memorable melodies, either.
I tried a couple of other songs from the same album (since that was the album where they apparently 'got good') and found the same thing. Odd time signatures placed just for the sake of being there, trying too hard to imitate the 70s, etc. Then I read reviews for English Electric Part 1 and it mentioned how Uncle Jack was a bit different, so I decided to listen to it. It was actually a really decent and fairly unique song even with the inspiration present! In fact, it was stuck in my head all day two days after listening to it!
I listened to it again the other day, then once it was over I forgot to choose another song and it automatically played Wassail from their EP and I really, really enjoyed that as well! Finally I decided to digitally buy the Wassail EP and realized something about these guys.. to me, when they try to be Genesis or symphonic, their textures are nice, but they can be pretty bland.
..But I think they just might be one of the best Prog-Folk bands I've ever heard. If they stuck to more folk-style, they might be one of my favourite bands (Granted, I haven't heard English Electric part 2 or Folklore yet, so who knows what I can expect!)
Edited by souio - July 02 2016 at 14:04
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I couldn't get into Big Big Train..(Opinion Piece)
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