Dazed #9: Wacky Americans and furious Swedes: Birds & Buildings, Cirrus Bay, Arch Enemy

First, a little preamble.

The other day I waded through the debut album Disobey by the Scottish band Comedy of Errors and was reminded of all the mediocre stuff that's as plentiful in this genre as in any other. The shadows of Genesis and Marillion loom large and long in the British prog scene and sometimes UK prog bands just get stuck under them. Now, I have read and heard that C.o.E. are a charming live band - a certain personality does comes through the essentially recycled music - but what I'm hearing is a very much a Fish-era Marillion re-run, only played with a little less skill and a lot less bravado and originality. It's competent but not much more. I don't mean to be too negative to an obviously sincere and long-standing band... but this is how I feel.

The reason for the whine above is three bands I have played these past few days: Birds and Buildings, Cirrus Bay and Arch Enemy. They have absolutely nothing in common, except that even when they acknowledge their respective musical heritages, they have the assurance and skill to move freely and express themselves within them. You may wonder what an über-metal band like Arch Enemy is doing in this posting, but you'll find out...

Birds and Buildings come from Washington DC and are a totally new aquaintance to me. Their debut Bantam to Behemoth (2008) is awesome; rarely have I been this impressed by a band's first album. This has been described in bandcamp.com as "a child of Crimson, Happy the Man and Gentle Giant" which is pretty accurate, but I think there's not that much KC and GG and much more of the trippily creative, jazzy and playful Gong. Pretty much the same can be said of the more recent Multipurpose Trap (2013) though the songs are now notably shorter.



B&B have a distinctive own sound: pretty aggressive (fuzz bass and everything) and there's an intriguing sense of near-hysteria and almost apocalyptic undercurrent enhanced by song titles like "Tunguska", "Terra Fire", "Yucátan 65: The Agitation Of The Mass" and so on. The playing is fierce and virtuosic but never in a showy manner; the pieces are very well composed, not just a series of impossible riffs, and there are shimmering lyrical passages that appear in the middle of the sonic storm

 Cirrus Bay, from the state of Washington, are in many ways the polar opposite of B&B. They are far from the most technically accomplished band in the world - the playing is downright clumsy at times - but they proudly do their own thing: somewhat folksy, quite positive, occasionally slightly epic/romantic and always cheerfully melodic semi or crossover prog. If reference bands have to be mentioned, I'd say Camel and occasionally Mike Oldfield, but with a more relaxed (American?) attitude.
 
The new album, The Search For Joy, is a pleasure. The female lead vocals are charming and the vocal harmonies likewise. Their biggest sin may be the sameness of the material but I like the natural quality of the overall sound and the obvious pleasure they get from playing this stuff. As a positive prog mood lifter and bringer of good cheer this goes down very nicely, thank you.

Finally, a few words on extreme metal. Arch Enemy's latest album, War Eternal, has formally nothing whatsoever to do with prog. It's all-out metal, with frighteningly intense growl vocals by Alissa White-Glutz (stunning successor to the by now iconic Angela Gossow), suitably macabre themes and all the furnishings of the genre.

But it's also a dazzling display of incredible musicianship: there are thousands of little details in the arrangements, the band's ability to create nuances in the firestorm is amazing, not to mention the sheer nerve of putting all those almost achingly beautiful guitar melodies in the center of so many songs. Just listen to a track like "Time Is Black" and marvel. Few prog bands can cram this many notes, ideas, dynamic subtleties, virtuoso playing and dashing dramatic bravado into four minutes. Goddamn marvelous, it is.

Dazed #8: RPWL's "Beyond" + "Wanted"

The German band RPWL has been one of my pet likes for a few years now. Originally a Pink Floyd tribute band, they quickly progressed into their own and already the first albums carry only traces of their Floydian past.

The title of their 2010 Best of... album is The Gentle Art of Music and that sums them up nicely. Capable of unleashing a wall of sound when they want, they have focused mainly on a rich, melodic style with a great sense of harmonic nuance - very much my kind of stuff :). I think they got better by the album, and 2008's The RPWL Experience, especially the special edition, was close to masterful. After that came the aforementioned compilation, and eventually the two latest albums, Beyond Man And Time (2012) and Wanted (2014) which together make up a story about existence, religion, repression and freedom of thought.

I was excited to finally sink my claws into the two-part story, but my initial reaction was less than enthusiastic. Beyond... kind of drifted by and Wanted seemed outright boring in places. But I'm happy to say Beyond... needed only a second listen to open up. It's a pretty muted, evenly paced album; even the guitar-driven single Unchain the Earth is a moderate rocker that pulses rather than bounces along. So a casual listening session is not necessarily the way to approach it. The music is carefully constructed, with hooks embedded beneath the surface. No baroque elaborations are there to immediately catch your ear, and I believe that's very much deliberate. It grows on you as you listen. The 16-minute epic The Fisherman is quite succesful and both the title track and the album closer The Noon are breathtakingly beautiful.

Having said that, Wanted still causes some problems for me. To my taste, there are too many plodding, off-the-production-line songs with mainstream guitar rock leanings, too much synth sequencing and some pretty unimaginative songwriting; the title track, for instance, does nothing for me. Not that there are no good moments. The album actually gets better towards the end and the majestic Misguided Thought may be among the band's all time best.

Summing up, I would have done a bit more editing and song selection and come up with one absolute killer of an 80-minute album. As things are, in my books Beyond... is very good and Wanted way too uneven but serviceable with its bright monents.

As a band, RPWL proudly continue their own path and I highly commend them for doing so. I will stay tuned for more...