IN A GLASS HOUSE

I first started listening to this album the way I always listen to prog. A track or two here and there, wetting my appetite, preparing me for the coming feast. I had buoght this recently by suggestion of the forum along with Free Hand, Octopus, and the Power and the Glory. I'll be honest; up until this point, the only song of theirs I liked was Free Hand. Everything else sounded terrible to me. Eventually, I decided to jump in and finally see what they were all about. I threw on this record and started listening. It suprised me. The first five tracks were pretty good, but I wasn't quite feeling them despite having listened to them for almost two weeks singularly. Then came In A Glass House.

The opening sounded to form and I was prepared to notch my belt with another three-star album, but then the tempo changed. It went away from what the other pieces had been and became far more poignant. I listened a bit mroe intently and then, those words, those sweet words...

"Shadows fill the light until the glass house becomes the night..."

I was hooked again.

I hadn't felt that sort of power, intelligence and musical mastery since Free Hand. Suddenly, it was all coming together. It was almsot like the first time I heard And You And I or any other great Yes song. It all started clicking. The album finished and I immediately put it back on again. And again. And again. The parts came together and teh album became mroe and more clear. I must have heard the album over ten times front-to-back by now and it has successfully become one of my favorites of any genre. I revisited the other albums and they, too, became more spectacular by the moment. The other albums may be arguably more technical (I don't believe this to be so, and Weathers's drumming is only more complex on Octopus), but this was the decoder. Without this album, I could not ahve enjoyed Gentle Giant, much as Yes would have been hard to enjoy without Yessongs, Jethro Tull without Thick as a Brick or Pain of Salvation without Remedy Lane.

Altogether, while their could have been some parts tightened up, this album still is a masterpiece, even if only for it's decoding capabilities. This album has managed to usurp time from my beloved Yes and Opeth, showing testament to its... perfection.