...JUST SUGGESTING

This is LIGHTYEARS from their debut. I mean INCOMPARABLY BETTER than their debut. When I got it from Musea in 2001... well, being subscribed to Musea Monthly Selection I often bought pig in a poke and was never disappointed by any new and unknown Musea release, but that time I was surprised why the label with strong reputation of a worldwide progressive fashion-maker released such a collection of pompous banalities, with only 3 tracks (of 8) really containing music. Something reminding Italian Pictures (do you remember their first and only studio album from 1997?) but much less brisk. I decided for myself that I should not monitor Skeem's activity anymore because they seemed to be definitively not of my interest. And so, the deeper was my amazement when I recently listened (by chance, just by chance, I was never motivated for listening to Skeem since 2001!) to ...Just Suggesting. A splendid release, really. Only with their second album, twelve years after the debut, the band proved that they do have their own creative face. Very powerful, distinctive and inventive tracks, especially Gone Away Muse (a true masterpiece in any respect I'd say!), quite intricate album structure, great instrumentation and musicianship. The only fault of the album is its excessive duration. I'm not sure that the message to the world included in the album really does cost 100 minutes of playing time. Maybe some water might be wrung out from the musical tissue, maybe some compositions are slightly longer than they deserve to be. But what to talk about if almost every song on the band's first album was at least twice longer than it should be?