SLEEPING IN TRAFFIC - PART TWO

This album is the second part of a duology, this album represents night, after the daylight-themed Part One. Night, to Beardfish, however, doesn't mean darkness, scary owls, and depression. Night means going out, missing a bus and spending your time in a sleazy 70s disco bar while fantasizing of pirates.

Unabashed, pure prog with modern influences and - gasp - a sense of humour. Beardfish meets expectations and exceeds them. Prog connaisseurs will have no trouble picking out the influences this excellent group shows - GENTLE GIANT and YES are all over the place, FRANK ZAPPA's quirky humour is just as ubiquitous, and the careful listener will notice modern techniques, twinges of distortion, and other interludes you'd expect to find in a modern prog band.

Apart from the sixth song, The Downward Spiral / Chimay, which doesn't quite pick up pace as easily as the other songs, this album fits the 'all killer no filler' template. A song-by-song review has been done often enough, but a few song deserve separate mentions. First of these the hilarious and surprisingly heavily rocking 'South of the Border,' a story of an annoying man who discovers he's a homosexual after accidentally seducing a drag queen, complete with heavy riff sbetween his pick up lines and an a capella rendering of ''cause he was gaaaaay!' Musically and lyrically daring.

The second seperate mention is the 35-minute epic Sleeping in Traffic, which explores many styles of rock, mentions to quote the bee gees, disco music, and pirate shanties without losing coherency for a minute. My advice is this: listen to it, then listen to it again. This track grows on you quickly, but take the time to listen to it; it isn't background music.

Easily the best album of 2008 in my opinion. It's time Beardfish gets the attention it deserves.