ALBION

On the strength of a precocious debut cassette or perhaps an unauthorized CD reissue which followed, a proper release was bankrolled by Sick Records. This eponymous "debut" mostly comprises reworkings from the demo, with a few previously unreleased pieces replacing some of the original tracks. The bad news is that the relatively weak "Scarecrow" and "You" survived the cut while the superior "Collapse" and "Shout" were victims. The good news is that the replacement numbers are uniformly excellent!

As I said before, "Scarecrow" plays like a mediocre BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST, with a decent sound but no development. "You" is most notable for representing the blueprint for the early success of OF MONSTERS AND MEN a decade and a half later, whether that Icelandic collective had ever heard this or not! In other words, it's clever pop with a few ambient tendencies, but a tad lightweight in this setting. The sound quality is cleaned up on the remakes, but not much else really changed: it's still lush, dreamy and melancholic with soaring guitar leads a la COLLAGE's "Moonshine" from a couple of years earlier, the heir apparent to the sound that COLLAGE couldn't grow before they imploded. Insert Anna Batko in lieu of Robert Amirian, clean em up and set em free! Well, except for "Golgotha", which is even spacier and suggests where DAVID SYLVIAN may have gone after his mid 1980s albums. It sports a rather fluid Spanish acoustic guitar style technique. I've yet to listen to more recent ALBION but this seems like this wouldn't be a bad template, unpredictable yet cohesive.

Among the newcomers, "Sarajevo" grafts a foreboding atmosphere to more uptempo sections reminiscent of STEVE HACKETT. "Shadow" is more mellow but just as haunting, anchored by plucked acoustic or low amp electric guitar and synths played like piercing winds. The band must have sensed the autonomic accompaniment and closed the album with an instrumental version. One Polish language mini epic is included, also gentle and acoustically driven, smoldering to an ensemble climax. The vocals do not dominate, and as such Albion avoids some of the most flagrant weaknesses of many practitioners of this style past and present. Spoiled again by Polish neo prog!