Band: Spock’s Beard
Release: Brief Nocturnes And Dreamless Sleep
Release Date: Out Now!
For those who are not familiar with progressive rock or the band at all, Spock’s Beard are rightly so one of the most most acclaimed and treasured progressive rock bands of our time. Formed in 1992 in Los Angeles, they have since toured the world numerous times, and have now dropped their eleventh studio album ‘Brief Nocturnes and Dreamless Sleep‘.
There have been a few noticeable lineup changes on this album, one of the main factors being that this is the first album with new singer Ted Leonard and new drummer Jimmy Keegan, who respectively replace original members Neal Morse and Nick D’Virgilio. However, there are also co-songwriting contributions from original member Neal Morse, as well as John Boeghold and Stan Ausmus (who have both been regular collaborators since their sixth studio album ‘Snow’).
What we have is 56 minutes of cool as hell, slickly produced progressive rock wig outs. Album opener ‘Hiding Out’ begins with a beautiful piano solo which then builds up in to the fray thunderous drums and pinch harmonics to make anyone start playing air guitar, and so the journey begins.
The first three songs are just classic and enjoyable progressive rock, complete with organs, mellotrons, synthesizers and a whole range of funky instrumentation, complete with some excellent drumming, fancy guitar and bass work, and some subtle yet great vocals.
It is only until the fourth track and album highlight ‘Submerged’, that the listener is treated to a more gentle and relaxing composition. It is in this track that Ted Leonard’s vocals are really at their peak, and is capable of showing his true potential within his contribution to Spock’s Beard. Additionally, the acoustic guitar sound and production is just simply sublime. This song is also probably the most accessible song on the album and consumer friendly to that.
The last three tracks provide yet more musical diversity. In the track ‘Afterthoughts’, there are some pretty darned cool dual vocal melodies and two consecutive almost scat-like moments where there are three different vocal lines all being sung at once. Just imagine a prog-rock barbershop trio, and you got it bang on. The album ends with the quite frankly epic ‘Waiting For Me’, a near 13 minute classic of expertly professional musicianship, songwriting, and multi-instrumentation brilliance.
Whilst this is a great album by all means, admittedly it did take a couple of listens to really appreciate everything that is going on because of how much substance there actually is. At one point on the first listen (to new listeners), you do wonder if this is just a bunch of musicians getting together for a jam to just show off their flair and musicianship. But when you realize that in fact, this is actually a solid band who actually are just really bloody good at what they do, you can put the notions aside that this is not just some self-indulgent wank. It is actually a classy album.
‘Brief Nocturnes and Sleepless Dreams‘ is an album of absolute crisp production, although at times the only flaw with the production is that the levels in the synths could have been brought down just a tad at times, and the rhythm guitars could have done with that extra bit of crunch, but needless of that it is predominantly great work.
Overall, this is a multi-dimensional album that will probably require a little bit of time and patience to truly appreciate, but once you get past that you can guarantee you will be truly rewarded. The best way this album can be described personally… imagine all the best bits from Rush, Yes, Kansas, added with a tiniest little dashes of Mastodon and Coheed & Cambria style riffs, blend all that together and you have got the perfect soundtrack to an episode of That 70’s Show, or even the 1960’s version of Star Trek. But saying that, that is in no way a bad thing whatsoever. Just because it has a very retro way of influences does not mean that it is dated, they just have found a way to bring it to a modern audience, and we can only hope that they continue to keep doing so.
8/10
Reviewer: James Paul Matthews
