Paul Menel Band (ex IQ), Autumn UK dates

Paul Menel (formerly of IQ) and his band will be playing a couple of UK gigs next month.

That's actually not such an easy question to answer!  When they played the Cambridge Rock Festival in August they played a mixture of new material and songs from the two albums Paul did with IQ ("Nomzamo" and "Are you Sitting Comfortably").  The new material probably has a more commercial rock element to it - although it's pretty varied.  I know a lot of IQ fans would say that Paul's two albums with IQ are more commercial than any of the others, which is probably fair comment.  But I think there are some stunning tracks on those two albums, such as Common Ground (and they played a few of them at Cambridge, so I was happy!).   There are some beautiful tracks in amongst the new material too, some of which have a prog feel.  I was also at the gig they played at the Peel back in January, and although I enjoyed the gig at the Peel, Cambridge was better.  The band had clearly benefitted from playing together for most of the year, Paul was in great voice, and Steve Harris (formerly of Ark) was on form on the guitar too.  The tent was pretty full, and the band put a lot of energy into their performance, and they sounded good.