WAR AND PEACE & OTHER SHORT STORIES

There are few affectations that get on my nerves faster than English musicians - and prog musicians in particular seem to be chronic for this - who make a big deal about how whimsically English they are. Perhaps I merely suffer from a chronic lack of patriotism, but I prefer to think that it's they who have a chronic lack of personality and seek to fill it in with an easy, prepackaged bundle of quirks which don't actually add up to much.

So, perhaps War and Peace by Sean Filkins was doomed to not impress me when Filkins decided to make a 1 minute intro track consisting solely of him tuning a radio to some patriotic music and making himself a cup of tea. (That's another thing I can't stand: excessive fetishisation of tea. It's a drink. It's a sodding drink and it isn't even that good of one.) The first proper track, the English Eccentric, reveals that Filkins isn't actually that eccentric after all: what's on offer here consists of a rather bombastic style of prog consisting of most of the obvious influences from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, with occasional harder-edged influences creeping in at the corners with the guitar work. The rest of the album proceeds in a similar vein. As far as solo orgies of multi-instrumentalist tootling go, it's technically adept and shows off Filkins' skills nicely but doesn't quite manage to have anything interesting to say or to connect on an emotional level except to irritate and annoy.