RETROPOLIS

After hearing about The Flower Kings and reading quite a few positive reviews I was interested to know what the fuss was all about. My first introduction to the band was actually while listening to a rock show on the local radio here in Stockholm, Sweden. The radio-DJ liked to challenge his audience by playing long progressive material on his show. On one such occasion, back in 2002, the DJ played the whole Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence-suite without interruption on commercial radio! On that same show he took an even more daring step by following it up with the 60-minute long The Garden Of Dreams, which incidentally was my introduction to The Flower Kings.

At the time I still haven't heard of Mike Oldfield's Amarok so a 60-minute composition seemed like a very ambitious idea. Although I didn't really like The Garden Of Dreams as much as I wanted to it gave me a taste for the band that I just had to follow up. Retropolis was the first album I managed to pick up at one of the bigger music stores in central Stockholm and it became my album introduction to The Flower Kings!

What I like the most about Retropolis is its consistency and that there aren't any very long tracks that overshadow the rest of the album which becomes somewhat of a problem for me on some of their other releases. I've never been too enthusiastic about Roine Stolt's vocal style which makes me think more about blues than progressive rock but it doesn't ruin the music for me. What does on the other hand get tiring and becomes even more apparent on the band's other releases is the lack of creativity. It's almost as if Roine Stolt decided to write the same kind of tunes for the rest of his life and although it does work here the album can hardly be called ambitions in its songwriting.

After listening to two more releases I guess it's safe to say that Retropolis is my personal favorite but they aren't that far apart. Still I consider this band somewhat overrated in comparison to many other fine acts so this particular album is good, but non-essential.

**** star songs: Rhythm Of Life (0:32) Retropolis (11:10) There Is More To This World (10:15) Romancing The City (0:57) The Melting Pot (5:45) The Judas Kiss (7:43) Retropolis By Night (3:18) Flora Majora (6:50) The Road Back Home (8:55)

*** star songs: Rhythm Of The Sea (6:12) Silent Sorrow (7:42)