TALES FROM THE LUSH ATTIC

This first IQ album is released in 1983. The same year as "The Script", the fantastic Marillion album. Even if lots of people (including myself) recognize strong influence of Genesis upon Marillion's work, I would say that is even more obvious with IQ. Their lead singer, Peter Nicholls sounds even more to the other Peter, you know the one from... He sounds as tortured as him and his vocal play sounds more natural, but less passionate, than Fish's one. IQ will have a pretty long career (still play together to date - 2007) with no so many line-up changes. This is great for the cohesion of course.

One must recognize that with the opening number "The Last Human Gateway" they are striking very hard. An almost twenty minutes long epic with poignant and vibrant moments (especially from Nicholls who at times sound absolutely wonderful), spacey and melodic ones, incredibely touching. There are no unnecessary solo, each member of the band working really as such. It lacks maybe the grandiose side of the legendary epics of the genre ("Supper's Ready", "CTTE", "Gates"...) but still, to deliver such piece of music on a debut album (even if some of them had already play together before in "The Lens") is a remarkable feat of skill. The finale is truely emotional. A great, great piece of music indeed.

To fill up side one, due to the limited amount of space available, we'll get a short rocking number. Good rhythm, good keys. "Through the Corridors" is a pleasant little tune.

We are back again in business with "Awake and Nervous". One definitely cannot get asleep with very good rock number. Very good melody again (but these guys know how to write catchy songs), it sounds almost heavy thanks to Martin Orford great keyboard play. This is another highlight of this very interesting album so far.

Another interlude with a very long title for a very short song. "My Baby Treats Me Right 'Cos I'm A Hard Lovin' Man All Night Long". I guess that they must have a good sense of humour since this short part is an all intrumental keyboard piece. One would ahve hoped to listen to some saucy lyrics, but nothing as such. It will only bring us to the final number "The Enemy Smacks".

It is a long piece again (but they will write several long numbers). It is not as brilliant as "The Last Human Gateway", It has a comlex structure but doesn't work very well on me. Some instrumental parts are too repetitive and lacks in emotion. It sounds very heavy at times, only the final part has some bombastic sounds. One could have expected a more brilliant number to close this album, but then I would have rated as a masterpiece.

The remastered CD edition features a very good bonus track : "Just Changing Hands". The chorus is a marvel of a melody while it sounds almsot heavy again during some intrumental passages.

This album is extremely catchy. It perpetrated the music we all (?) love in a period during which Yes was producing "90125", Tull "Under Wraps" and Genesis had released "Abacab" two years before. IMO, this album is probably not the best IQ one because some numbers (two) are somewhat weaker but it is rather encouring. Four stars.