SPIRIT

This is one of those prog albums where the lyricist decides to tackle the big questions of life and death and whether there's anything after that and all that jazz - think IQ's The Wake or Ever for preceding examples in a neo-prog context, though anyone with a reasonably-sized prog collection can probably cite a bunch more. It's also one of those albums where the artists decide to be proggier-than-thou by including a really epic song - in this case, the titular Spirit is a 45 minute epic, and then there's a last song tacked on at the end as a sort of epilogue - a bit like Mike Oldffield's Ommadawn has On Horseback at the end.

So, there's the blueprint, but how did Comedy of Errors do on the implementation? Reasonably well! The lyrics are not going to offer any major philosophical revelation to anyone who's been at least momentarily thoughtful on the subject of mortality, but the same old sentiments are at least expressed in a pretty way, with a mostly solid musical backing. That said, I don't think it's as consistent as the preceding Fanfare and Fantasy, and I think there are moments where the challenge of constructing the long piece overshadowed the requirement to make sure every piece of music was top-notch.