MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES

I don't envy the poor staff member who had to fit this band into a category. I'm not sure that Jazz Rock/Fusion is where I would have ended up were I in their shoes; sure, bassist Derrick Elliot, evidently a fan of Percy Jones, prominently employs a fretless bass throughout the album, and "Coin Incidents" with its groovy drum rhythm and smooth sliding analog synth does try to hint at some jazzy stylizations, but all things considered this is a band that refuses to be easily pigeonholed. On the opening track "Light Bikes" for example the band nonchalantly jumps from sections that are clearly math rock-inspired, with moto perpetuo lines played on top of each other on guitars with a distinct mathy sound quality, to sections that are mainly organ-based, to rumbling, roaring sections that sound more like progressive metal. Truth be told, and this is just my personal bias speaking, but the metallish guitar sounds kind of turn me away from this album; that mildly generic, overly trebly and overly slick prog-metal guitar tone gets a little stale for me eventually, and while Jon Reicher is undoubtedly an accomplished instrumentalist, his playing style isn't really unique enough to keep it interesting for me. Nonetheless, there definitely is a lot that I'm still able to appreciate on here. The 10-minute-long "Carnival Minivan" is a delight, progressing through a very nice symphonic opening, a beautiful math-rocking main theme, a lengthy jazzy jam in 6/4 with trumpet and guitar, a restatement of the main theme, and a triumphant outro. Likewise, "Stone Among Pebbles" is one big buildup of tension in the grand tradition of Yes's "Würm". Ironic how the two longest tracks on the album are my favourites whereas some shorter tracks such as "Oceania" overstay their welcome a bit. While I wouldn't call this a classic, I'm left with an overall positive impression and look forward to what this band does in the future. Recommended for fans of Animals As Leaders, Tricot and Liquid Tension Experiment.