FANCLUB CD 2005 - HARVEST

Interestingly enough, I was actually able to purchase this from a friend of the band (and former North America fan club rep) not too long ago. Since the Kings probably are not going to be doing any more of these fan club CD's, I figured I might as well Complete my collection. For the most part, I'm glad I did. Unlike the other fan club albums, this is strictly a band effort, with the exception of one track. At least, as far as I can tell, since the music all sounds like the Flower Kings, albeit not quite on top form. The first couple songs are the best, being fairly complete sounding compositions, though totally instrumental. The other tracks seem more like experimental pieces that were not really suited for an album. With that in mind, they all come off pretty well and I like them each to varying degrees. The one non-FK song, Doorway, is from the band Moonsafari and is on their first album which was produced by Tomas Bodin. To me, this song is fairly dull and boring, taking a long time to develop and not really doing much when it does. There is definitely a strong Flower Kings influence, but they are lacking the interesting structures and instrumental breaks that the Kings are best at. Basically, the song has all my least favorite FK elements and non of my favorite. I will not be checking out this band obviously.

But that song aside, I'm going to go ahead and give this 3 stars. Keep in mind that you probably can't get this CD, and even if you could it's really only for hard core Flower Kings fans. With all that in mind, I still think it's a solid 3 stars.