THE WINDOW OF LIFE

After the major improvement in style and quality over Kowtow, Pendragon's third album, The World, gave me some pretty high hopes for their next albums. Right after finishing The World, I headed right into The Window of Life. The first thing I noticed during the four-minute keyboard intro to The Walls of Babylon was the Floydian influence, bearing a very similar psychedelic guitar sound to their 70's albums. That was a major sigh of relief as so many neo-prog bands, even of the modern day, would rather go for Genesis influence. However, this didn't mean it was anywhere near as good as Floyd, in fact I would even say that it was a minute too long at the lowest. Thankfully, the rest of this song was magical. The combination of guitars and synthesizers was absolutely gorgeous in comparison to past works.

Of course, a part of me was afraid that the opener was the best that the album had to offer, but track 2, Ghosts, quickly proved me wrong. The unique instrumentation and the reliance on pianos and the Latin American influence in the guitars were a nice and calming surprise right before the album goes right into the symphonic vein of prog with some incredible backing effects and instrumentation that sends me right to Oz. THIS is the type of song that I expect from real prog. Even though it follows the accessible synth vein of prog we all know as "neo," this is wide-ranging, mystical, complex in its own outrageous personality and much more impressionable than anything the band had put out before. I honestly believe this is a better song than the opener, and I was considering making it my favorite neo-prog song.

Of course, the challenge had changed the moment Pendragon decided to follow up a neo-prog epic with a symphonic prog epic. Now the challenge was to diversify again. If fanciful behavior was favored over diversity in the end, then at least I got an album where the band tried much harder. I had very little doubt they would pull it off. Breaking the Spell begins with a slow and atmospheric intro, and a part of me was really hoping they wouldn't break out into heavy melodies two minutes in, otherwise it would be knocking off the last track and run the risk of becoming formulaic. Thankfully, it only increased the usage of slower effects and synths, taking further influence from Floyd but still sounding like Pendragon. That's a PERFECT was to continue the album, especially after introducing it with a four-minute solo a bit like this, except this song's much more intriguing. This was the slow epic, obviously, and it maintained that even as it turned into a rock song halfway through. Excellent diversification of prog so far, even if the guitar work isn't really "masterfully" slow or intriguing. It obviously shouldn't be too fast in a song like this, but it's only pretty good.

Next comes the final epic, The Last Man of Earth. It goes right into the medieval influence and starts off calmly, as all of the songs have done so far. I was hoping the medieval influence would be the driving force here, but I guess that's a bit much to expect from a 14-minute epic, so in the end I had to hope it was more interesting than the 26 epic from The World, Queen of Hearts. The sound drove right into a guitar focus after a couple of minutes, but the melodies and instrumentation made a point of hyperactivity pretty quickly while still maintaining constant accessibility, but drove into a lengthy middle section of careful poetry and atmosphere before getting into the hard rock side of things eight minutes in and ending on a calming but epic note. Overall, I'd say this is yet another worthy entry to the album, but it isn't as good as Ghosts.

Now that the epics are over, all we have left are two shorter tracks: a six-minute one and a five-minute one. Interesting way to end an album full of epics. They could've just ended it on the fourth epic and it would be fine, but they didn't, so let's see if we have another "Love and Affection" situation. Nostradamus opens with two minutes of much more packed and interesting effects than other songs have started out before getting to the glitter and the poetry. It's easy to get lost in this, however, being unique and beautiful while you can just sit and absorb the lyrics alone before the guitars kick in. Of course, this is also telling me it's a shorter version of The Last Man on Earth. It progresses a bit like that song. This also means the song could've been a couple minutes longer. In comparison to all the epics, it feels like this song wasn't fully developed to meet the magic of the instrumentation. And finally, there's Am I Really Losing You, which steers much closer to the AOR side of things. Now since that's a key part of their history, I'm not complaining about that. But it bears none of the playfulness of the rest of the album, and feels very simple. So in the end, we really DO have a Love and Affection situation.

Other than the finale, I am 100% pleased with the new direction they took. They came, they saw, they knocked it out of the park by combining their standard neo=prog sound with the astral atmos of Floyd and the melodic charms of Yes. I would even go as far as to say that this is a better album than IQ's Dark Matter, being more outlandish at times and boasting about the concept of creativity without ever losing the personal sound that the band has developed from The Window of Life. This wasn't some cheap neo-prog band trying to rip off either Genesis or Marillion or even Floyd. This was a band that cemented their OWN sound. This is Pendragon.

Social review comments

Review related links

• Send comments to Rexorcist
• Report this review (#3157322)
• Buy PENDRAGON music online with PA partners
• Show all PENDRAGON MP3/Stream
• Go to PENDRAGON page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to The Window Of Life page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for PENDRAGON related discussions