Non-Prog Album Reviews

The three "political" songs here that seemingly everybody focuses on here, of course, are "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," "Free Radicals" and "The W.A.N.D.," and I feel like people spent way too much time looking for subtext in these that wasn't there. It's like everybody wanted "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" to be about President Bush, basing their reactions to the song almost solely how they felt about him, when it's clearly a goofy musing (no different in tone than the types of musings that Coyne had done about outer space and sunbeams and starlight) about power corrupting people. I can see where somebody might find the vocal sampling in the song incredibly obnoxious (I admit it took me a couple of listens to get used to it), and the song isn't a career highlight, but it's a fun, hyperactive pop song that I enjoy singing along to, so I'm glad it's here. "Free Radicals" (which people wanted to build up into some sort of critique of people as political fanatics, I guess) is a bizarre attempt at something Prince-like, featuring somebody (I'm guessing Steve, not Wayne, though I don't know for sure) singing in falsetto over one of the clumsiest attempts at a funk groove I can imagine; I don't quite hate it, but it definitely gives a bad impression for the rest of the album. And "The W.A.N.D." is just a fun guitar hook with a goofy effects-laden song built around it, or so people would think if they weren't so fixated on the "We got the power now!" line. I just don't get why people would suddenly have this idea that this band, of all bands, would suddenly develop a topical political conscience, and I feel like these things are just a distraction from the real identity of the album.

The other track that people fixated too much on is the "single" portion of "It Overtakes Me." The main riff and vocal melody makes it seem like one of the dumbest pop songs the band had ever done, even if the processed "You know that it is unreal" vocal line makes it clear that there's a bit more going on here than one might find in a typical No Doubt single. People then often tend to dismiss the whole track as a failed single, which is funny to me, because this ignores the entire second half of the song. You know, that whole section where the track turns into breathtakingly gorgeous directionless atmosphere, full of snippets of Yes-ish pedal steel (or something sounding like it) popping up amongst great synths and vocal parts that nearly beat Jon Anderson at his whole game? Or how it suddenly turns on a dime from there into acoustic lines that do nothing if not evoke early Genesis? Do I just have a hacked copy of the album that's different from everybody else's? What is going on here?

See, here's the thing: once you get past the songs mentioned, as well as a couple of pleasant-ish keyboard-driven ballads ("Mr. Ambulance Driver," the closing "Going On"), the big stories of this album are (a) the band's willingness to go further than ever in embracing the studio and all available production techniques and (b) the band's total embracing of classic prog rock. Longtime fans of the band probably wouldn't be thrilled with either of these; one could make the argument that this album largely severed the band's ties to its "traditional" past of ultimately being based in a "real" band unit working together, and the fact that the band has jumped so thoroughly on the prog rock bandwagon here (the last two albums, artsy fartsy as they were in a lot of ways, were still mostly slightly dressed up pop music) probably wouldn't thrill most people either. Personally, I find these developments fantastic; regarding (b), I'm not necessarily inclined to prefer prog rock over other kinds of music, but the band shows it really understands the guts of what made this music style so enjoyable way back when, and they assimilate themselves into this world surprisingly well. Regarding (a), the band makes use of tons of vocal and instrumental effects on this album, and while some may think these get tedious after a while, I'm too busy enjoying all of the cool sounds the band is grafting into its (still first-rate) melodies.

Of the remaining six songs, two can't quite be lumped into the prog rock category, but they're great nonetheless. "Haven't Got a Clue" seemed like a silly novelty song the first time I heard it (agreeing with my pre-conceived notion of how the album would sound), and maybe it is, but it's a fantastic silly novelty song. The synthetic beat under the acoustic guitar is as addictive as similar tricks were on Yoshimi, there are gobs of great synth effects, and the lyrics, well, you'd be surprised how much fun it can be to sing "And everytime you state your case, the more I want to punch your face," followed by those vocal noises and matching guitar sounds. If you've heard the song, you know what I'm describing, and if you haven't, you need to hear it now.

The other one that's not quite prog rock, but maybe is kinda sorta, is "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion," which features Wayne in full-blown Brian Wilson mode (as pretty much everybody who mentions the song feels obligated to mention). Maybe the lyrics mine slightly familiar territory ("Yes it's true someday everything dies"), but I have to admit that I'm a sucker for lines like, "They only see the obvious/They see the sun go down but they don't see it rise." And man, those keys, and that simple guitar part in the break, and that ATMOSPHERE. Slight shame about the production, though (more later).

The other four aren't anything but prog rock. "The Sound of Failure" feels to me like it belongs in Wind and Wuthering-era Genesis, and while I find what actually made it onto much of that album disappointing, it also fostered a vibe that made for a handful of absolutely fantastic ballads ("Blood on the Rooftops" and to a lesser extent "Your Own Special Way," as well as the amazing outtake "Inside and Out"). Am I really the only person who can imagine (with great happiness) the late-70's Collins giving a great vocal workout, Rutherford laying the foundation on acoustic and bass, Hackett doing all sorts of great guitar texture things, and Banks sitting back and giving some quality atmosphere? Ah well, fun fantasy it may be, this song is really great as is, featuring a great contrast between the laid-back verses and the up-beat "Don't tell Britney and don't tell Gwen ..." section, and I really dig the atmospheric instrumental section at the end. A couple of tracks later, after "Cosmic Autumn Rebellion," comes an absolutely top-notch atmospheric keyboard/-acoustic-guitar-driven ballad in "Vein of Stars," and if somebody can't find joy in that upwards spacey guitar line in the breaks or the amazing mellotron (or its digital doppelganger, whatever), then I just don't understand them. The instrumental, "The Wizard Turns On," is a little less impressive than what came before, as it emphasizes the ugly squealing guitar line more than I'd like (More Mellotron Flute! More Ominous Keyboards!), but it's still pretty nice.

The big massive highlight, though, is clearly "Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung" (literally either "The Collapse of Pompeii" or "The Downfall of Pompeii"), a prog-rock masterpiece (clearly drawing from Yes and Pink Floyd though showing no direct plagiarism) that tries to depict the freezing in time of a young couple by the fires of Vesuvius. Keywords: Mellotron flute; great bassline; amazing tear-jerking guitar solo; sparse, atmospheric-as-hell vocals and lyrics. It's some of the best prog rock I can imagine coming from a band that isn't quite exactly prog rock.

If there's a general downside to the album beyond what I've said thus far, it's that the band probably recorded things a little too loudly; there's some clear clipping in the sound, even in great tracks, and I kinda hope for a remix some day that cleans up some places that need cleaning up. "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion" and "Pompeii," in particular, have some muddiness and crackle that get a little distracting (though I kinda feel like it's appropriate in the second half of "Pompeii," though: there's lava covering everything, after all). This is only a minor inconvenience, though; it's not crippling in the same way as the loudness on, say, Vapor Trails was.

Overall, then, while I can't really say for sure this album is exactly underrated (it's gotten lots of bad reviews, but lots of good ones too), it sure feels pretty misunderstood to me. Personally, I think it's clearly better than Yoshimi; it may not be as consistent, but there are more and higher peaks (yes, I think "Sound of Failure" and "Pompeii" are definitely better than "Do You Realize?"), and I feel less like I'm searching for things to love here than there. If you don't own it, I can't guarantee you'll really like it (it is, after all, extremely easy to dismiss this whole album as "annoying" if you want to), but you have to give this a shot.