STARLIGHT TALES

The second Episode album is quite a bit like the first, although this one consists primarily of two lengthy works and a handful of shorter, simple accompanying tunes. The singing is also a bit more restrained than on the band’s debut, with piano and other keyboards tending to dominate for the most part.

“The Ship” is a nice folk-like tale about a boat on a mystical journey of sorts, and has a nice kind of lumbering rhythm to it but not much else. “Grey Matters” is quite similar but with a less-clear lyrical theme, and “Bobby in the Bushes” is just filler.

“Pinnacles” is thick with loopy harmonizing vocals and plenty of acoustic guitar and keyboard effects, but again the lyrics are rambling and abstract, and lacks any real spark.

“Edge of the Sky” consists a long, drawn-out keyboard orgy composed (not surprisingly) by the band’s keyboardist Nick Peck. Despite the relative scarcity of vocals, this doesn’t really qualify as either a symphonic epic or a jam session, but rather sounds like a moderately free-form attempt at an instrumental story-song, although the point of the story is kind of lost on me. There are some decent drum passages and like I said, plenty of keyboards and piano, but the whole thing seems to lack any real focus and doesn’t really achieve any kind of real meaning.

“Barriers of Attitude” sounds more like a late eighties soft rock tune, with only a short instrumental keyboard passage to really distinguish it much. The singer sounds a bit like Joan Baez at times, further affirming my impression of these guys as some aging flower- power children.

In a similar vein “Hesperates Rising”, the other long track that occupies about half the album tells a tale about another moon rising up in the Earth’s sky and sort of challenging humankind to clean up their act, or something to that effect. The whole point of the story is a bit hazy, and the song transitions through a number of movements that seem to evolve, but the whole thing rambles on much longer than seems necessary and fails to really capture the imagination. The production is quite good for such a minor label and the individual members are all excellent musicians (although the drummer has a bit of a tendency to plod along at times), but I wouldn’t rank this among the better epic- length symphonic works in history. It’s interesting at best.

Maybe it’s just because I got both of Episode’s albums at the same time (downloaded directly from their web site – nice to get free music directly from the band at least), but this one seems to be quite a bit more disjointed than the first album. I get the impression this is just a collection of things the band put together in the four years between when the first and last album released, which would make sense I suppose.

I can’t really recommend this one, especially if you had to buy it. But since the band offers it free from their web site, I suppose they deserve some credit for being accessible and accommodating at least, so I’ll say 2.4 stars and will probably check out some of their videos on the site as well.

peace