ADAM & EVE

After the horrible Unfold The Future I was expecting Adam & Eve to be sort of "back to the roots" album (like Stolt promised himself). Well, that's what they did, but very badly. The album contains symphonic progressive rock (like the excellent Stardust We Are and Back In The World Of Adventures) but the ideas are dry and songs full of cliches. Especially the epics were big disappointments. Driver's Seat is a flow of pointless rock riffs and old prog-melodies and the "main epic" Love Supreme is a joke: we've got here about three pop-songs clued together plus a typical pompous prog-ending. I got tired of these epics after just a few listening. But in the other hand, I'm glad that they didn't add their trying-to-be-jazzy-jams (like on UTF) here to make the music even worse. I guess the only truelly qualified jazz-musician in the band is Jonas Reingold (and Tomas Bodin in his own perverse way), so it is really horrible when Mr. Stolt comes jamming along to ruin everything with his guitar licks as always happens. We don't even have Ulf Wallander questing on the album and filling in his tasty jazz solos. The Flower Kings is not a jazz band, so at least they have made something right on this album. But anyway, Adam & Eve offers nothing new for the progressive rock scene and I guess Roine Stolt has ultimately run out of ideas so there'll be no more good TFK albums in the future to wait for.