{"id":44309,"date":"2015-11-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/citizen\/"},"modified":"2015-11-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T00:00:00","slug":"citizen","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/citizen\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizen"},"content":{"rendered":"

The tricky part about reviewing a Billy Sherwood album is keeping the intro-slash-backstory under four paragraphs. Over the course of 30 years as a bandleader-vocalist-composer-multi-instrumentalist-producer-engineer-mixer extraordinaire, Sherwood has worked with much of the known progressive rock universe, most notably filling several of the aforementioned roles with Yes, the pioneering band he grew up admiring and eventually joined. That one run-on sentence aside, though, I\u2019ll leave the rest for you to explore in the context of my recent interview<\/a> with the man.<\/p>\n

Citizen<\/i> is Sherwood\u2019s eighth solo album, and a landmark one for him in a couple of significant respects. It\u2019s his first concept album, a time-travel fantasy built around the idea of a single person (The Citizen) being reincarnated again and again to observe, record and even take part in critical moments in human history. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the first time that Sherwood\u2014who plays guitar, keyboards, bass and drums\u2014has included guest players and vocalists on one of his solo discs. Here, mirroring an approach he\u2019s taken with a number of tribute albums over the past 20 years, he adds at least one notable guest on every track, and the resulting assemblage of talent is a veritable prog all-star team: half of Yes\u2019 convoluted family tree shows up, plus the likes of Steve Hackett (Genesis), Colin Moulding (XTC), Steve Morse (Deep Purple), Alan Parsons (Pink Floyd & the Alan Parsons Project) and Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater).<\/p>\n

The result is an album that addresses head-on the biggest issue I\u2019ve had with some of Sherwood\u2019s past solo work: a certain samey-ness. Part of the issue is that Sherwood tends to deliver a very consistent sonic palette: crisp, airy, \u201980s\/Trevor Rabin-style arena-prog production framing songs and performances that tend to favor technical proficiency over emotional engagement. While Citizen<\/i>\u2019s overall sound bears Sherwood\u2019s characteristic stamp, the arrangements here are among the most fluid and varied he\u2019s ever delivered in a solo context, benefitting again and again from the tremendous chops his guest list brings to the table.<\/p>\n

The heart of the album lies in a trio of songs toward the start. \u201cJust Galileo And Me\u201d features Colin Moulding\u2019s wonderful lead vocals atop one of Sherwood\u2019s more creative arrangements, a folk-prog number with a sharp acoustic guitar solo framed by a catchy chorus. Shifting to the trenches of World War I, the anthemic \u201cNo Man\u2019s Land\u201d is lit up by a pair of dynamic solos from the clearly-enjoying-himself Morse. And \u201cThe Great Depression,\u201d an atmospheric ballad that finds the Citizen preparing to jump from a ledge after losing everything in the stock market crash, is highlighted by Rick Wakeman\u2019s rippling, superb piano work. <\/p>\n

Other moments of note include the final recorded performance by Sherwood\u2019s friend and mentor Chris Squire of Yes, pumping the title track through the ceiling with a steady, booming bassline; the tasteful, atmospheric keyboards Patrick Moraz adds to \u201cTrail Of Tears\u201d; and Jerry Goodman\u2019s skyscraping violin work on \u201cEmpire.\u201d Notable also is Sherwood\u2019s muscular, nimble bass work on tracks like \u201cNo Man\u2019s Land\u201d and \u201cEscape Velocity\u201d; there\u2019s no question in this fan\u2019s mind that Sherwood was the only logical choice to take on Squire\u2019s former role as bassist and harmony vocalist in Yes. <\/p>\n

A couple of thoughts on the production as a whole. In general, Sherwood\u2019s lyrics work best when he writes in first person; it\u2019s the old \u201dshow don\u2019t tell\u201d maxim at work. And I do wish Sherwood the producer wouldn\u2019t rely so frequently on processing Sherwood the singer\u2019s vocals through filters and other sonic doodads; masking the singer\u2019s voice with effects inevitably creates emotional distance just when you\u2019re trying to foster connection. <\/p>\n

These quibbles aside, Citizen<\/i> is among the strongest work found in Sherwood\u2019s solo catalog, an imaginative concept album whose A-list guests deliver in spades, making this trip through time a memorable ride well worth taking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8760],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-44309","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-billy-sherwood","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44309","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44309"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}