PROGRESS

My interest in hearing Ideamen came as a natural byproduct of being a huge fan of Dog Fashion Disco, seeing that Tim Swanson was involved in both of these projects. Still, I wouldn't exactly call Ideamen to be a spin-off of Swanson's endeavors since they aren't as off the wall crazy as any of the Todd Smith-fronted projects. I clearly remember giving this EP a spin on Spotify in early April/May 2011, but it took me quite some time to warm up to Ideamen and their style. It's not that the music was pretty catchy to begin with, but rather that I simply wasn't in the right frame of mind for this material until now.

Listening to the album opening track Vivid sparked a completely different and amazing reaction in my mind when I listened to it a few weeks back. I'm sure that you'll understand exactly what I mean once you give this track a spin. This composition suddenly felt like a masterpiece of grand proportions and made me want to explore the rest of these five compositions! Know The Dance had a completely bipolar reaction on me since I'm generally not that fond of the whole Latin beat approach (I have the same reaction to reggae music). Fortunately, it didn't take long to warm up to this track and especially it's mid-section where the composition changes gears only to return to the main theme towards the end.

Cavity is probably the heaviest and most satisfying track on Progress. It's as close as Ideamen will ever get to sounding like a pure Progressive Metal act. Straight Shooter is another highly off-beat moment that might take some time to warm up to unless you like the whole country inspired approach. I see this track as a parody of the genre, which is why it wasn't really much of a problem for me to enjoy it. Add One is my least favorite moment of the bunch. It's not a bad track by any means, but there's clearly something missing in this performance and I can't really point my finger at what it is. If anything, it does indeed feel like a perfect last track when compared to the much more energetic rest of the material on Progress.

This first taste of Ideamen really got me interested in hearing their followup full length studio release May You Live In Interesting Times"and it wasn't long until that wish became a reality...

***** star songs: Vivid (3:23) Cavity (5:19)

**** star songs: Know The Dance (3:45) Straight Shooter (2:48) Add One (5:09)