CRIME OF THE CENTURY

After reading the reviews of this album I felt compelled to rush out and buy a copy, as I felt that it would fill a whole in my expanding prog collection. From the reviews I wasn't expecting pure prog rock, but a more gentle and simple style of music. What I wasn't expecting, however, was boredom.

After listening to this album four times, I cannot rouse any interest in it at all. It is by no means terrible, but after a year of listening to the greats such as Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull and King Crimson, I found the music on offer here so simple and unchallenging. Much of the music is piano driven, yet I feel Roger Hodgson is at best an adequate piano player.

Many of the songs here seem based around the repetitive playing of keyboard or piano chords, which are simply layered upon one another to create the illusion of a complex song. The lyrics are unchallenging and uninteresting and many of the tracks seem deviod of direction or structure.

The only track on this album worthy of any real mention is Dreamer, which at least has a fairly interesting sound. However, this song is typical of the entire album as it simply consists of layers of bog-standard keyboard chords repeated over and over.