ABDUCTING THE UNICORN [AKA: ABDUCTED AT BIRTH]

There's no doubt that Bruce Soord is one of the strongest and most consistent songwriters operating in that prog-leaning alt-rock niche, and he trumps the Yorkes and (just about) Wilsons with his guitar work, both rhythm and lead, if not in inspiration. Over the course of well over 10 hours of PINEAPPLE THIEF material, there are very few genuinely weak efforts, and even fewer, if any, are unforgivable. So when I declare this to be, on balance, the least essential of the band's releases, that criticism reveals more about the height of the bar than the quality of this record. SMASHING PUMPKINS but with flashes of prog? RADIOHEAD but less concise? Post-grunge PINK FLOYD? Stupid-Dream-era PORCUPINE TREE but less...amazing?

Originally titled "Abducted at Birth" (and re-released as such in 2010 by Kscope), the record was hijacked by the label (neglecting to realise that many listeners, even those open to the avant-garde, would rather forget VULGAR UNICORN, and fans of that project [to whom I offer my apologies] would presumably have heard about Soord's new project anyway). We got a better title (the original) and cover art on re-release.

The great news about this album is that the feedback was positive enough that Soord committed to THE PINEAPPLE THIEF. Better still, the music, while listenable here, got even better and more focused after this. The songs (eight, plus one) are, without exception, stretched to breaking point, leaving a pretty bloated album weighed down terribly in the middle by, to be honest, mediocre songs looped excessively with slightly over-protracted progression. The worst of the bunch (of TPT's discography, not just the album), "No One Leaves This Earth" and "Everyone Must Perish", at times resemble ill-judged TEARS-FOR-FEARS instrumental B-sides, and replace "song" with "alien" to create something strangely memorable, and not without merit, but not particularly melodic or praiseworthy. Two more bog-standard albeit listenable songs are shown up by their 6-minute-plus runtimes ("Whatever?" and "Judge the Girl"), and "Punish Yourself" successfully fuses Britpop's generic progressions and melodies with the angst of the grunge it superseded, with relatively strong results.

"Mysterious Extra Track" (or "Untitled") is a lot better than it sounds, but what saves this pretty non-descript collection are the two epics and single-candidate "Drain" (as a shorter edit, of course). Epic closer "Parted Forever" leaps into the cool waters of dreamy, Floydian prog, sounding like PORCUPINE TREE's "Radioactive Toy" stretched into oblivion, but the warm-cold passages are oddly hypnotic. Again, it would probably work better with six minutes or so shaved off, but exactly which six minutes is up for debate. This is definitely the track of choice for committed prog-fans, and we don't get anything as long or ambitious until "What We Have Sown"'s superlative near-title track nearly a decade later, but this is probably the Thief's least well-produced and inspired epic of the lot.

But, for me, the opener is the highlight. "Private Paradise", despite having the most bloated length-to-ideas balance of all amongst stiff competition, just works. Great beat, strummed guitars abounding around programmed drums (which get old as the album wears on), alt-rock that skims along brilliantly through twelve brilliant minutes, with genuinely one of the best-thought-out guitar solos I've heard in a while closing it all off. This is the one track that made it onto the 3000 Days compilation (while we're at it, that's probably the most "essential" pre-Kscope release), for good reason. As such, while 3/5 feels slightly harsh for such a competent and promising selection of material, "good, but non-essential" feels about right.