THE GREAT DIVIDE

The Great Divide is an acoustic, old English and bluegrass-influenced version of Prog Folk not unlike The Strawbs, Gryphon or the more acoustically-oriented solo albums of Ian Anderson, Cat Stevens, or Peter Shelley with a little pinch each of Peter Hammill and Frank Zappa thrown in there for good measure. Entertaining, mostly unpredictable, and, thankfully, mostly instrumental. (I cringe to think of hearing this music delivered by electric instruments. Devin Townsend!) The play of a full complement of rock band instrumentation is nice. Though I'm not necessarily a fan of this type of music, I appreciate it's integrity both compositionally and skill-wise.