PLEASE BE QUIET

Gungfly (which means uneasy ground or a quaqmire in Swedish) is basically just the one bloke. Rikard Skjoblom. He plays all the instruments (minus, I think, one or two drum tracks) - which just serves to make this album even more astounding!

Gungfly has a decidedly poppier sound than Beardfish. However, don't immediatly dismiss this album because of this and the short song lengths - the compositions are still extremely interesting with great melodies and chord progressions noticably more exciting than your average chart-topper.

One of the first things you'll notice about this album is that it refuses to stick to the ordinary rock instrumentation, instead taking advantages of classic prog instruments such as organs and other strange instruments including an accordion. When the distorted guitar is used, it is often modified with a strange effect, such as the crazy guitar solo on "Fly Into the Sun".

I think the progressiveness (should be a word) is in the variation of the compositions - some are folky, some are "indie" sounding, some are snyth driven, guitar driven, spanish sounding, country sounding, accordian driven, minimalistic or complex. There are also many interesting solos, synth solos, guitar solos - all very different and very interesting.

Most of the songs on this album are brilliant, consice compositions. The stand-out track for me is "Rumbling Boxes" - the "proggiest" song, it contains a long-ish instrumental section with an acoustic piano solo - it's fantastic.

However, I have a problem rating this album. All the songs are great, but as they are mostly 3-5 minutes long, it's very different to rating a normal prog album. Sure, all the songs are great but simply don't contain the same compositional exploration as other, meatier prog albums. Yet, I cannot deny that I enjoy listening to all these songs - with there more subtle variations and fantastic vocals and lyrics from Rikard. So, I am going to rate this as five stars, but if you are a progressive elitest you may not enjoy this album as much.

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