BELIEVE

I discovered Pendragon on this site and have fallen in love with "The Window of Life" and "The Masquerade Overture", so I was expected great things from this new CD. I've had it for a few weeks to give it time to 'settle in' so now it's time for the review.

It starts off promisingly with the atmospheric "believe", featuring female vocals (possibly Gaelic?) before a voice pops up with "and now, everybody to the dancefloor!".

This leads into the riff-driven "no place for the innocent". This is a great guitar-based number which could even be a hit single!

"wisdom of solomon" starts off with Arabic-sounding female vocals, then some typical Nick Barrett guitar before an acoustic guitar leads us into a Spanish-sounding number.

"the wishing well" is this album's epic with 4 sections. "for your journey" is a mainly spoken section, very atmospheric, leading into "sou' by sou' west" which is reminiscent of earlier Pendragon and features some nice acoustic guitar. "we talked" speeds things up a bit, although I find the stuttering snare drum beat interrupts the flow a bit. "Learning curve" starts off with some more talking and ends with some brilliant guitar work.

The final track "the edge of the world" is another very atmospheric mainly acoustic number. Features some Polish! I'm sure there are some forum members who can tell us what "dzien dobry, jak sie mamy" means. Another typical Nick solo and something that sounds like the dreaded vocoder.

Pendragon have changed direction a bit here, as others have noted there is less keyboards than before. The guitar work is as good as ever, but there are still reservations over Nick's vocals. I was disappointed with this CD initially, comparing it to the brilliance of Masquerade Overture, but it is now growing on me. At the moment I give it 3 stars.