WHAT WE HAVE SOWN

"Pink Thief" indeed. The most "Pink" of all albums, if you take my hint. This is an "expansion of eclecticism" started by the previous album "Little Man", which was essentially the first real disc to define Thief's style. Only, unlike "Man", here the listener has a full palette of musical moves and scales. And this is the most "acoustic" opus from the entire discography of the group. The melodies, as in the earlier works of the group, are still extremely "fragile", the text component is so far nothing more than a beautiful shell of the music, but the latter should be discussed separately. Music now has a pronounced progressive direction, I would even say "symphonic". The sound is melancholic, juicy and rather angry, considering that the band, in fact, was only gaining momentum then. This is such a "Symphony of a Little Man", barely getting to his feet, but already confidently and ambitiously walking forward. The album's jewels are a number of tracks. "All You Need To Know" is the can opener of the album: the composition contains all this inimitable recording as if in miniature. The thing at the end is peppered with a great guitar solo from Bruce Soord, who has proven himself to be a great master at extracting mood from strings. The second diamond of the album (and, perhaps, of the entire discography of the group) is "Deep Blue World". A magnificent sublime sadness, a panoramic "modulating" voice with fragile intonations, flying up and falling down, coupled with landscape and bright keyboards. The same beautiful, almost "street-tough", acoustic guitar interludes, carrying alarming tension, replaced by picturesque expanses. In this song, the group almost "offhand" took bite off a huge musical layer, skillfully reworking it into their future style. Therefore, "Deep Blue World" (for me) can enter the "gold pool" of "neo-progressive" music. The controversial point is the title track "What Have We Sown" with a rather vague melodic component: it lasts as much as 27 minutes! Hey guys! Isn't it too early for such epic canvases for a group that has just left a rather narrow format? Just a really good melody could just as well have sounded for about seven minutes. To date, this is the longest composition by "The Thief", and its length is not as justified as it seems to the authors of the song. The rest of the songs correspond to the high level of the musicians and the direction of the album. Special thanks to the band for the great cover of the disc; it seems as if combines the scope and motives of "Atom Heart Mother" and "The Division Bell". Just a characteristic landscape, but, as in music, and visually, "The Pink Thief" is able to make beautiful out of everyday life, which one wants to listen to and consider for a long time.