THE REST OF PENDRAGON

The Rest of Pendragon compiled three Pendragon EPs - Fly High, Fall Far, Red Shoes, and Saved By You - and contains mostly non-album tracks (although the title track from Saved By You featured on all but the earliest versions of Kowtow, and the tracks from Fly High, Fall Far also appeared as bonus tracks on some versions of The Jewel and 9:15 Live).

The album presents the EPs in reverse chronological order, which gives a nice sense of returning to the roots of the band - appropriate, given their rediscovered neo-progressive direction on The World, which came out in the same year. At the same time, the sound is remarkably consistent for the time period covered - yes, the first few tracks are poppier, and the last few tracks are proggier, but all the songs represent the sort of prog-pop fusion which Pendragon emphasised in the 1980s. It's also pretty much the last gasp of that approach before the band would return to a style based firmly in the neo- prog genre. While it isn't strictly speaking an excellent album from the perspective of a prog rock fan, it's more representative of this side of Pendragon than the schizophrenic Kowtow. I'd never recommend it as someone's first Pendragon purchase, but I wouldn't steer people away from it either.