When Kansas fans heard earlier this year that the “classic”
\nlineup — including guitarist Kerry Livgren — was reuniting for
\ntheir first album together in 17 years, they must have pinched
\nthemselves to see if they were dreaming. This was, after all, the
\nKansas that most people know, pumping out songs like “Dust In The
\nWind” and “Point Of Know Return.”<\/p>\n
But if you expect their “reunion” album,
\nSomewhere To Elsewhere<\/i>, to be the return to top-40 form that
\nsome people might be looking for, you’re going to be disappointed.
\nThat’s kind of what I expected the first time I listened to the
\ndisc — and walked away shaking my head. (“Reunion” — I know, the
\nwrong word to use, as Kansas has never gone away all these
\nyears.)<\/p>\n
The truth is that you need to approach this disc in two ways:
\nfirst, you need to look at it as a progressive rock album, one that
\ndoesn’t give a rip whether radio touches it or not. Second, you may
\nchoose to approach it as if it were a solo album by Livgren
\nfeaturing some very special guest performers, as Livgren is
\nresponsible for all 10 songs (though I don’t know who to blame for
\nthe 90-second throwaway “bonus” track).<\/p>\n
The showpiece of the album, “Icarus II,” is a narrative based on
\nthe true story of a pilot who ordered his crew to abandon their
\nwar-damaged plane while he guided the wreckage away from American
\ntroops. This isn’t the type of song that will hook you on the first
\nlisten — and I kind of expected it to have those hooks. But when
\nyou hear vocalist Steve Walsh ring out with “I’m going home” near
\nthe end of the song, that’s when the magic is clearly visible in
\nthis track. With each successive listen, I’ve found new things to
\nlike in this track.<\/p>\n
Other tracks like “Grand Fun Alley” and “Myriad” hint that
\nKansas still knows how to write a melody that would set a radio
\nprogrammer’s mouth drooling. But make no mistake, Kansas doesn’t
\nseem to be interested in writing hit singles on
\nSomewhere To Elsewhere<\/i>; the focus is on the music and how
\nthe band translates the movements of the songs. “Myriad,”
\ntherefore, becomes less of a hit single and one of prog-rock’s
\nfiner moments of the last few years.<\/p>\n
Livgren’s religious views occasionally show their head on
\nSomewhere To Elsewhere<\/i>, but they never dive into preachiness
\nor anything that may turn a listener off. But there most definitely
\nis a spiritual aspect in songs like “The Coming Dawn (Thanatopsis)”
\nand “Byzantium” that makes the songs quite pretty, and allows them
\nto be heard on several different levels.<\/p>\n
Yet
\nSomewhere To Elsewhere<\/i> suggests that Kansas is not quite as
\ncomfortable in their familiar skin as they would like to be. Tracks
\nlike “Disappearing Skin Tight Blues” and “Not Man Big” just don’t
\nhave the spark that one might expect in an album so eagerly
\nawaited. “Disappearing Skin Tight Blues” actually sounds out of
\nplace when compared to the musical richness of tracks like “Icarus
\nII,” and suggests that the band may have been trying a little too
\nhard on this one to make it sound like a top 40 possibility.<\/p>\n
And while many people are falling over themselves to praise
\n“When The World Was Young” as the potential hit single, I honestly
\ndidn’t find myself captivated with this track. It’s not bad, but it
\ndoesn’t have those magical qualities that I heard in other songs
\nlike “Myriad.”<\/p>\n
\nSomewhere To Elsewhere<\/i> is an interesting portrait of a band
\nnearly 25 years removed from their hit single glory days, and it
\nmakes me wonder what they would have been capable of had they kept
\nthis lineup together all these years. Maybe some of the directions
\nyou can hear the music move in would have seemed more natural in
\nhindsight. Still, it’s hardly a poor effort, and while there is
\nstill some tentativeness, the disc suggests that the band still has
\nthe magic that made them superstars. Here’s hoping this disc is a
\nfirst step for the “classic” lineup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5839],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-36675","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kansas","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36675"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36675"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}