BELIEVE

Do you remember the good old days when you had to really dig through the internet for an album to play when you couldn't afford to pay for it because the economy sucked? I do. I dug through Beatles, King Crimson, Prince and Bob Dylan when the studios would pretty much execute anyone who uploaded a song of theirs online. Nowadays, these albums are all on official YT pages, but there are still a select few bands too cheap for it. One of these is Pendragon, apparently, as their album Believe has proven difficult to find.

Pendragon surprised me a little bit when the titular opener was made up of Celtic new age vocals, ambient reverberations and a diverse range of sounds, but the real shocker was when No Place for the Innocent sounded a lot like some modern country-infused alternative rock song you often hear on the radio. It was the farthest thing from Pendragon. Now it was hardly a great song by any means, when told me that this was Pendragon's equivalent to Metallica's Load, being an album where they would try a lot of new tricks. This is later justified by the inclusion of The Wisdom of Solomon, which goes into a lot of tribal instrumentation before acoustic guitar is combined with the guitars you expect to find in Pendragon songs. Now unlike the last one, The Wisdom of Solomon is a kickass song. I actually had to find this one on a recorded top 10 Pendragon songs podcast.

The previous three songs surprised me with a detail I never expected: synths are downgraded. We don't see them in full force until the 21-minute epic, The Wishing Well. Even then, Pt. I is practically a new age track. It's not even that great. Pretty, but not very imaginative. Pt. 2 of this epic is a much more standard Pendragon song with the synths and guitars back in full force and a stronger sense of melody and progression, justifying its seven minutes when pt. 1 couldn't even justify five. Pt. 3 is where they got crazy with it. It steers into some seriously energetic hard rock, which is a pretty cool step to take on a more "art rock" album that showcases new ideas, but what the hell is Barrett doing with his voice? I mean, does he think he can get away with mimicking Steven Tyler? And then there's Pt. 4, which is more rooted in the AOR sound of the first two Pendragon albums. I was wondering if they'd go back to that someday (though not really "hoping," just wondering), and it was a decent return to form, but not exactly prime songwriting. It was closer to a 2000's AOR sound.

Now when we get to Learning Curve, there are some EXTRA Floydian soundscapes, more complex and engrossing than anything they've ever done. True psychedelia. The instrumentation, while switching to rock, keeps in line with the opening psychedelics, thankfully. But there's a huge problem: the vocal melodies are simple, monotonous and boring, and as a result, kind of insulting to the keen instrumentation. And finally, there's the mellow and more synth-driven closer, The Edge of the World. This one does a good job using quiet synths and Floyd guitars to bring your spirit at ease. There are some extra new age touches in the second half that send your brain into overdrive very easily. Honestly, these last four minutes are probably the best part of the album.

I think I'll call this an "art rock" album instead of a "neo-prog" album. I commend Pendragon's new attempts at diversifying. Maybe they overdid it a little as a couple of the tracks are a little dull, but it's largely an interesting and catchy experience. These guys are obvious rockers, and they maximized their love of it on this album, so it didn't end up being a disaster by any means, even if it might've been a major shocker to the fanbase at the time of its release.

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