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...