SUMMEREVE

I'm sorry but this album is so flawed, substandard, and redundant in production, engineering, and performance, respectively, that I cannot imagine giving it a "excellent" much less "essential" or "masterpiece" label. The chamber music songs ("Glares of Light," "Under Stars)" and the folk tune "Evening Dance" are beautiful, but "Season's Overture," "Blackmountains," "Prelude of an elegy," and "Edge of Summer" are so full of clichéd sounds, riffs, and motifs that I'm actually quite astounded that experienced ears find this "masterful" and "essential." Half the time I feel like I'm listening to New Age music from the 1980s or practice songs from the 1980s Genesis roadies. Everytime the lead electric guitar enters and performs it feels so over the top, so melodramatic, so "been there, done that," (i.e. tired, old) that I'm almost repulsed. This might be pretty music, but "good" is all I'm willing to rate it. And I've been listening daily for over a month now feeling somehow insecure that I'm missing something--that there's something here that's NOT!