BRAINS!

Hailing from the city of Burlington, Vermont where hippie jam bands in the vein of the Grateful Dead are much more common than progressive rock comes the ELEPHANTS OF SCOTLAND who somehow found inspiration from a completely different musical avenue and started in 2011. Led by bandleader / keyboardist / vocalist Adam Rabin, these guys debuted in 2013 with "Home Away From Home" and now twelve years later have released the fifth album BRAINS!

It's been eight long years since the last ELEPHANTS OF SCOTLAND release and Rabin returns with a completely new cast of musicians joining forces with only guitarist John Whyte returning. Resembling the previous album "The Perfect Map," BRAINS! features seven vocal tracks and then repeats them all in instrumental form. This is a trait in the world of symphonic prog and neo-prog that i clearly don't get and honestly don't like however many bands have engaged in a similar marketing strategy although it's usually reserved as bonus tracks on a second disc however it appears that BRAINS! is only available as a digital download.

While the band has mixed the world of symphonic prog and neo-prog on past releases, this one seems more steeped in just the symphonic prog side of things leaving the neo-prog aspects behind for a while. Without the instrumentals this album features seven tracks that add up to just under 42 minutes. While considered symphonic prog BRAINS! sounds more like an alternative rock album with symphonic prog extras as the compositions are a bit in the area of crossover prog rather than super proggy sprawling composiitons that implement a plethora of keyboard layers. In many ways ELEPHANTS OF SCOTLAND sounds like what i refer to as garage prog and a bit amateurish.

This is my first exposure to the band so i have no comparisons but it seems their past releases have found their share of listeners and the audience seems to have tapered off at this point. Perhaps the previous members were what was gave the band a sense of a real band but for me personally i don't find this very appealing as the songs aren't very interesting or memorable and neither is the instrumental interplay. The real deal breaker for me though is Rabin's limited vocal ability as the music at hand requires a competent vocalist to lift it out of the category of ordinary. The final two tracks that are over eight minutes do try to construct proggier supernatural fairytales but once again rely too much on standard rock procedures.

I can't really comment too much about this release because i just find it below the standards of what i consider a decent symphonic prog or neo-prog experience. It's sort of folky at times, it's sort of indie rock but the prog never really kicks in to my liking. Perhaps the band's best days are behind them or perhaps they're still ahead but this particular album isn't really a memorable first experience. I'll have to go back and check out the debut album to see how this band sounded at the beginning when it seems to have attracted the most attention. Not my cup of tea but perhaps some will find this appealing. It just rubs me the wrong way in too many ways. I do love the crazy album cover though which is why i checked this out in the first place!