CATFISH RISING

I bought this CD as a teenager when the album was originally released, as this band was suggested to me when I started to search progressive rock bands inspirited by Yes, Genesis and so on. The pretty covers helped me to do the purchase decision, but sadly I was a bit disappointed of the music. Though the album quality isn't very poor, the overall musical style isn't very innovative here in my opinion. As the album title suggests, this album returns to the band's delta blues influence origins, which were more strongly present at the beginning of their career. But instead of my own favored 1960's tones, the supporting musical context relies on hard-rock influences.. "This Is Not Love" opens with AC/DC resembling riffs, blended occasionally with flutes and keyboards. Melodies and verses are good but not very innovative. The instrumental passages sound like the good old Jethro Tull though, but this stuff is nothing when compared to their heyday recordings. The first song ends to a distasteful double bass drum run, which is faded out, and I don't recall ever heard as poor solution to end a song like this. "Occasional Demons" and "Sparrow on The Schoolyard Wall" sound bit like the music on the last album of Dire Straits. Then "Roll Yer Own", "Rocks on The Road", "Gold-Tipped Boots, Black Jacket and Tie" and "When Jesus Came To Play" have some acoustic guitars bringing memories of their earlier recordings, these being quite good basic rock songs. "Thinking Round Corners" has the classic flute rhythms, sound and artistic style of this band crowning this song as one of the album highlights. "Still Loving You Tonight" is a slow blues ballad with distasteful sounding keyboards, resembling some kind of AOR tune. "Doctor To My Disease" is a straightforward hard-rocker, but "Like A Tall Thin Girl" returns luckily to the bluesy regions, which work best in my opinion here. "White Innocence" is quite long as it runs nearly eight minutes. This tune has nearly all elements found from the other tracks of the album; A ballad verse, hard-rock riffs and acoustic blues runs, so it's actually quite interesting song, one of the best along with "Thinking Round Corners". "Sleeping with The Dog" is left to the gutter along with the other bluesy songs, not having acoustic guitars though, nor being very interesting.

This album could be recommended for the fans of blues and hard-rock music along with the fanatic followers of Jethro Tull. If the listener is into this kind of stuff, this should be a good purchase, as it is produced quite well.