SONGS FROM THE HARD SHOULDER

2022 sees The Tangent release their twelfth studio album, the really nice 'Songs From the Hard Shoulder' - this one consists of four new songs and a very interesting bonus track, all making up a total of 75 minutes worth of music, filled up with the usual Tangential goodness - a lot of jazzy pieces, shifting moods, menacing synths, and a Canterbury/Van der Graaf Generator-ish nod, all intertwined within Andy Tillison's quite recognizable musical vocabulary. Following up the not so impressive 'Auto Reconnaissance', this album is a definite improvement; However, something is missing and I do believe it is the bombastic lush side of the band's music that one can appreciate on the debut or on 'A Place In The Queue', or maybe it is the focus displayed on 'Proxy' not being too prevalent here, could also be the exuberant excellence of something like 'Le Sacre du Travail', but whatever it is, there is this overarching feeling of incompleteness.

Opening up the album is the 17-minute 'The Changes', a pretty good song for The Tangent's standards, but up until the middle; After that, it gets a little washed. Fine riffs and pleasing jazzy playing are all over this one, but it becomes quite forgettable at a certain moment, making a little too challenging to go though the whole thing. Next up is the 17-minute instrumental fusion-y explosion of 'GPS Vultures', perhaps the best track on the album, which also holds up pretty well for what it is, it also keeps the listener engaged as it is harder to predict where the band will go next. The big 20-minute epic 'The Lady Tied to the Lamp Post' is slightly disappointing, despite the fact that the playing on this one is mostly very minimalistic and intelligent, it suffers from the same problem mentioned for track one - it becomes repetitive and directionless after the first quarter. 'Waster Soul' is too strange to be deemed exquisite, not a big fan of this song. The bonus track is an interesting cover of 'In the Dead of Night' by U.K. mixed up with one of Andy Tillison's electronic pieces, which are scattered all over The Tangent discography, as we know. A good album but not one that betters, for example, the fantastic 'Proxy'. The band get a little too distracted at times and go playing in no-man's land, which ultimately leads to several disposable instrumental moments, at least to my taste.

Nevertheless, when good, 'Songs From the Hard Shoulder' is really good! Its pessimistic tone, however, is not what some of us necessarily need to absorb all the time, and this is way too 'in-your-face' on tracks one and three.