THE LAST BRIGHT LIGHT

The Last Bright Light is by many considered to be Mostly Autumn's finest hour and though I can understand why someone would think that, in my opinion they peaked with the previous The Spirit Of Autumn Past. After the rather weak debut album, Mostly Autumn perfected their craft on The Spirit Of Autumn Past. With the present album, they move on to some extent and partly adopt a more contemporary sound. While there is nothing wrong with trying out new things - indeed, that is just what they needed - I personally don't much like the direction they were going in here. The focus is now stronger on the Pop-side of the band and the production is more contemporary. One could think that the production is improved, and in some sense it is, but personally I liked the raw edges of The Spirit Of Autumn Past better. The sound of The Last Bright Light is somehow too "perfect" and something is thereby lost.

After an instrumental intro repeating the melody of The Gap Is Too Wide that closed the previous album, we get We Come And We Go as the first proper song. To my ears, this tune sounds just like something you would hear on Rock/Pop radio any day and as such it is just dull! It bores me with its catchy but utterly predictable melody and overly simplistic lyrics. The album comes off to a slow and lazy start and I miss the rocking Winter Mountain that opened The Spirit Of Autumn Past with a punch. Half The Mountain is another slow tune, a bit better, but hardly remarkable in any way and almost equally radio friendly. It is first when we reach track five, The Dark Before The Dawn, that The Last bright Light can lay any claim whatsoever of being a Prog (or even Prog Related) album.

The Pink Floyd influences are still very much in evidence, and sometimes they once again come across as Pink Floyd-clones. But on this album, as I've said, they also adopt a somewhat more contemporary sound. Overall, I think that there are just too many ballads on this album and they almost never rock out. When they do, it often sounds forced like on Never The Rainbow which is a 100% conventional rocker. Admittedly, there is a nice flow to the album, at least on the first half. However, all of the long tracks have been extended beyond what was necessary and the compositions are not as strong here as on the previous two albums. There is not one song on this album that is as memorable for me as the best songs from For All We Shared and The Spirit Of Autumn Past.

The Celtic Folk-side of the band has been considerably toned down for this album and it is first towards the end of the album that we get the most folky tunes, Helm's Deep and Which Wood? These two are actually my favourite songs from The Last Bright Light.

There are some good moments here for sure, but generally this is not really my cup of tea I'm afraid

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