PREHENSILE TALES

Pattern-Seeking Animals is an impressive new band, that technically isn't "new" in the sense of how you would typically think of it, even though they were initiated in 2018. Three of the members of the band were members of "Spock's Beard"; Ted Leonard, (guitar, vocals), Jimmy Keegan (drums, voices), and Dave Meros (bass) who were joined by contributing songwriter John Boegehold (keyboards), who also brings in his own influences to the musical stew. They released their acclaimed, self-titled, debut album in 2019 and quickly followed this up with the excellent "Prehensile Tales" in May of 2020.

Once again, the band hits the ground running with this album, beginning with the perfect opening "Raining Hard in Heaven", a progressive and powerful 8+ minute track that will grab your attention right away. All of the musicians shine while none take the "limelight", but instead provide equal opportunity for each one of them to prove their strength as an entire group. This track is one of the highlights for the album. At this point, the band moves into a more accessible style with three less progressive (yet equally satisfying, nonetheless) tracks that keep your interest as the album continues. This includes the considerably catchy "Elegant Vampires" which leaves you with a memorable groove and engaging vocals and melody.

At this point, the album returns to a more progressive stance as two more highlights close off the album. These are the exceptional "Lifeboat" at over 17 minutes, and the excellent and emotional 12 minute closer "Soon But Not Today". Both of these tracks would definitely fit comfortably on a 5 star album as both of them are amazing kaleidoscopes of dynamics, tempo and meter shifts and well-constructed tracks. This is a perfect way to end this album.

So, as it would seem, the longer tracks are the better ones and these all open and close the album, and on their own would merit 5-star compositions. It's the middle three tracks that tend to make the album lose a bit of progressive steam, even though as just regular tracks, are still pretty great. But sadly, they bring down the overall score of the album in a progressive sense. Because of the best tracks, which easily take up ¾'s of the album, this is definitely an album that should not be ignored, and that is from a person that is not a big fan of Spock's Beard (mostly because I don't care for Neal Morse's vocals that much). Overall, I consider this a 4 ½ star album, but have to round it down to 4 in the end. However, I still would encourage everyone to listen because the high points do make up most of the album and they are excellent "highs".