ONE DROP IN A DRY WORLD

An incredible amount of time (twenty-four years !) between the first and the second album release of "Maestoso" (if you exclude the "Black Boxes" compilation work). Our dear friend Woolly called it quit after the failure of his album debut to chart and only got back on business with his old chap John Lees at the end of the nineties for the BJH come back album "Nexus" (1999).

At times, the sound is harder than what could be expected ("Blood & Bones"), while "A Waiting Game" is an accoustic and quiet little tune and "It's You" is a pop-rock and childish one. Not too good IMO. None of these songs are bad, but neither one of them can be consider as special. "Souk" with its Oriental flavour (sounds all too logical) brings some variety to this album. Nice melody for this more rock oriented song. Pleasant.

Woolly will also propose some true BJH songs like "One Drop...".Very melodic, a bit mellow. It's the longest song of the album and it will allow some time for a good guitar solo before returning to the nice & melodic section. Some sort of "Râ" atmosphere to close this very good song (he did almost the same with "Patriots" on his "debut" album). The highlight.

"ANSS" provokes some opposite feelings : nice pop-rock song mixed with some weird reggae-ish beat. While the pop sounds are quite alright, I really hate the mix. The one really has nothing to do with the other. This song could have been a very good one but it is ruined by these short and completely useless instants and even if "Explorer" features a nice melody, it is too mellow, poppish and naive.

Another good song of this album is "2 A.M." Nice keyboards during the whole song, quite atmospheric a track, I should say. This is another highlight of this album. But let's face the truth, this is not great music. Just pleasant symphonic prog. I have a lot of difficulties to enter into the ultra repetitive "The Starving People Of The World...". Extremely long title. I would have expected a kind of protest song, but we'll only get the title repeated again and again, till the end of this short track.

The closing number is another very good song. Maybe my fave of the whole. Fully symphonic, crescendo (like "Afterglow"), passionate, beautiful intro. Rocking beat during the finale which really rocks. "Carpet" is a very pleasant way to close this album.

This album is more personal than the first one. The BJH relation is not so obvious. This album holds very little highlights. It's a nice collection of good songs for fans only I guess. Since I am one of these I will rate this album with hree stars (but this is on the higher end, really).