A PLACE IN THE QUEUE

I accidentally forgot to get the special edition of this, and while that bugs me, it means that this review gets to be shorter than it might have to be.

Here, and I would rather not have to say it's because Roine Stolt is no longer a part of the band (but I might), The Tangent finds its feet and stands as a real band. Supergroups usually don't come together as well as a regular band, and all the different musicians seem to drag the music off in different directions. That was the bane of the first two discs by these boys. However, something clicked with this record. Something clicked, and it's visible straight away.

In Earnest is a ridiculously good epic track. I used to be incredibly excited to see any song over twenty minutes--I figured that since the bands I listened to at the time did really long tracks well, any band that did really long tracks could do them equally as well as well (yes, that's how I meant to say that). Some don't, though, and The Tangent has had a rough history with epic tracks (as if, as it were, they wrote anything else before now). But here is where Andy gets his music straight, and the band is wholly with him. Vocals being what they are (slightly shaky and not exactly terribly different from Roger Waters), everything about this song is perfect, and that's a feat for twenty minutes. If the rest of the album kept up with this piece, couldn't a disc on this planet take its place.

Of course, implied in what I just wrote is that not everything does keep up with In Earnest. So, let me be straight with you, not everything does keep up with In Earnest. Lost in London is good and fun, but not great. DIY Surgery is fun, weird, unique, but not great. GPS Culture and Follow Your Leaders are also quality tracks. All four star worthy songs. The Sun in My Eyes is really neat. I like it a whole lot, though it's nothing terribly progressive. Maybe almost neo progressive, if the definition I've been given about that happens to be an accurate one. The final closing epic, A Place in the Queue (of course, by now, The Tangent's affinity for title tracks should be pretty plain), is good, with a lot of neat parts and, like In Earnest, full of lyrics that actually mean something (rare in prog, I know). However, it's not spectacular enough to pull this album from a four star to a five star.

Four stars, nevertheless, is not a bad rating. This album is great. Seriously. It's not perfect, but it's hard to really enjoy any album that is, right?