THE FINAL BREATH BEFORE NOVEMBER

Eh, I might be a bit out of step with most prog fans on this one, but by my reckoning this second Edison's Children effort is, whilst still never less than competent, somewhat less interesting than their debut. Yes, out of all the acts out there with a modernised Floydian sound they're probably one of the more engaging, but I feel that the album's centrepiece - Silhouette, a song clocking in at over 67 minutes - presents some fairly fundamental structural problems.

Pete Trewavas is no stranger to super-epics like this from his time in Transatlantic, of course, but I personally find such efforts to be extremely hit-and-miss - there's a real danger in trying to be "prog for prog's sake" and extending song durations simply for the sake of demonstrating prog credentials, regardless of whether the song demands to be strung out for that long. Each twist and turn and movement of the composition seems to stick around just long enough to get irritating, and I usually tune out before half an hour is up.

On top of that, once again lyrically and thematically the guys go right back to the "pining for a dead relationship" territory which they'd already regularly plumbed on the first album, and whilst the subject matter suits their melancholy tone at the same time a bit more variation would be nice, lest Edison's Children paint themselves into a corner as music for depressed divorcees.