I like Spock’s Beard<\/a>. (Duh, sayeth
\nthe regular readers of the DV.) I like ’em a lot. And I wanted to
\nbe wrong, a few years ago, when I said Neal Morse leaving the band
\nwould make them just another progressive rock band — nothing
\nspecial, nothing wonderful. I’ll state it again, for posterity; I
\nwanted to be wrong.<\/p>\nIf their new CD,
\nOctane<\/i>, is any indication, I wasn’t wrong.
\nOctane<\/i> is, frankly, a muddle. It’s disjointed, uneven, and
\nlacking in anything resembling musical cohesion. While there are
\nindividual bright spots, taken together the CD has no unity. When
\nyou factor in that most of the CD is supposed to be a theme album,
\na single musical work — well. It doesn’t work.<\/p>\n
Let’s cover the good stuff first. Production and engineering are
\nmagnificent. (It’s a great sounding train wreck in places.) The
\nmusicianship is elegant, fantastic, and brilliant as usual. Give
\nthe Beard credit; they even manage to restrain Ryo Okumoto from
\nsounding quite so much like
\nPoint Of Know Return<\/i>-era Kansas when he hits the
\nkeyboards.<\/p>\n
Where Octane fails are the songs. I’m sorry, maybe I’m a spoiled
\nbrat, but when a band’s portfolio includes incredible things like
\n“Wind At My Back,” “Ghosts Of Autumn,” “Waste Away” and “Distance
\nTo The Sun,” I expect better than clich\u00e9-fests like “Surfing
\nDown The Avalance” and “As Long As We Ride.” Nominally, the first
\nhalf of the CD is an examination of someone’s life literally
\nflashing before their eyes as they’re dying, and I understand that
\nmay require language a little less poetic than Snow – but a lot of
\nthe tracks on Octane are, plain and simple, boring, flat, and
\nweak.<\/p>\n
It’s not all bad. There are some good tracks on
\nOctane<\/i> — I really liked “She Is Everything” and “There Was
\nA Time” — but the ultimate test is this; there are eleven tracks
\nfrom
\nSnow<\/i> on my iPod. There is one from
\nOctane<\/i>. Coming from a band that is either my first or second
\nfavorite, depending on the day, that’s pretty damn sad.<\/p>\n
I wish there was some way I could recommend
\nOctane<\/i>. I wish Neal Morse hadn’t found Jesus. I wish a lot
\nof things. Most notably, I wish that I hadn’t wasted twenty bucks
\non this CD. For an album that’s about life flashing before one’s
\neyes,
\nOctane<\/i> is already pretty dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":27084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6237],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-38416","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-spocks-beard","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38416","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38416"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38416"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}