THE LAST BRIGHT LIGHT

This right here is where Mostly Autumn start to lose me. The Last Bright Light basically continues the general Floyd- meets-Tull folk-prog approach of the first two Mostly Autumn albums, but whereas their first album (For All We Shared) at least had a bit of novelty going for it and their second album (The Spirit of Autumn Past) found their sound becoming better-honed, here they seem to be merely treading water - and, worse, repeating old mistakes.

My biggest issue here are the vocals. Now, don't get me wrong, Heather Findlay is a fine vocalist - in fact, she's one of the band's best assets in my opinion. The major problem here is Bryan Josh who'd be better off taking the advice in the title of that old Zappa all-instrumental boxed set: "Shut Up 'N' Play Yer Guitar". I don't say that to be nasty, but it's pretty undeniable that of the two main lead vocalists in the band Heather is simply streets ahead of Bryan when it comes to having an engaging singing voice. When his vocals are set next to Heather's, Bryan's deliver cannot help but sound mundane, dull, and generic, the sort of thing any minor league Floyd cover group or indie rock group could muster without too much effort.

As it stands, there's too many instances on here of Josh singing songs which could have quite happily been handled by Heather, which is rather irritating - take We Come and We Go, which could be a much more uplifting song had it been sung by Heather, but with Bryan on vocals the chorus ends up drab and dirge-like.

Musically speaking, it feels like Mostly Autumn do not make much in the way of musical progress here compared to the preceding album. Occasionally they attempt to step out of their rut - The Dark Before the Dawn opens with a more electronic section than is normal for them, and it's quite good (for a Bryan-fronted song), though it feels like in the concluding section the more folkish instruments Angela Goldthorpe's flute are rather buried in the mix under the more conventional rock instruments. as though the mix were being done with half an eye to smuggling the less commercially- friendly aspects of the band in under the radar rather than giving them their due prominence.

Between this and a rather saccharine, mawkishly insipid thrust to much of the lyrical themes, The Last Bright Light is, so far as I'm concerned, the first red flag - a sign that perhaps my aesthetic tastes and what they are going for with their music might in the long run become incompatible.