POLLEN

Pollen is a debut album of a French symphonic rock band Pulsar. The band's music bears strong resemblance to what is said to have been their original musical inspiration - namely Pink Floyd (covers of whom the band played when they started out) and Genesis. Still lacking a very defined and distinct sound, band appears to be fluent in space rock jams infused with various synthesizers. All of the tracks are throughoutly melodic with an already mentioned strong symphonic feel to them.

"Pulsar", a self-titled track marks the very first appearance of an awfully high-pitched synthesizer sound that is going to appear throughout the rest of the whole album. I find its tone dreadfully ear-soring and unpleasant. The overall feel of this song is familiar, sharing common elements with some of Pulsar's contemporaries. "Apaisemen" is where French vocals kick in. I feel these are not of the highest quality. Not shrill, but rather dull and uninteresting. This tune has a very Peter Gabriel-like flute part painted on canvas in form of smooth, mellow string synthesizes. "Puzzle/Omen" is again drenched with previously mentioned synthesizers and features (this time in English) a female spoken poem part. This resolves to a catchy, cinematic-sounding melody again, inspired by Genesis and maybe even Camel. All this topped with a very spacey feeling. "Le Cheval De Syllogie" is in my conjecture the best track on the album. It starts out with superb, dark electronic sounds. Than the melody comes with a superb guitar part and lush organ backing. This track is kept in a Van Der Graaf Generator-esque mood. "Pollen" is a more feminine, quitet and acoustic song with decent flute playing and sadly weak vocals.

In conclusion, Pulsar's debut album is flawed to some extent. The band seems to have felt a bit too comfortable with electronic effects which (at times used unprofficlently) ruin potentially enjoyable moments. At moments lacking, sometimes exposing the shortage of experience, this shares many blemishes with other bands still looking for their sound. However, it does have some very neat moments to it. The follow-up of this one is a much better effort! Three stars!