Alan Parsons - From the New World (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 15 Jul 2022
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For someone who seemed to be retired from the music business, Alan Parsons seems pretty set on releasing a lot of new music. I reviewed his most recent studio album, The Secret, in 2019, but I last encountered him as an actor, in an unusual short film called Galactic Fantastic! in 2020. However, I see that he's issued not just one but two live albums since then, with One Note Symphony: Live in Tel Aviv released in February. The Secret arrived no fewer than fifteen years after its predecessor, A Valid Path, but only three years on and here's another one.

I have to say that I liked this a lot more than The Secret immediately and for a few songs, but that faded as everything softened up. That previous album often felt more like a collection of musical numbers to me than a rock album and this ends up there too, albeit not quite so overtly. Certainly for a while, it's more like the rock albums that we remember from Parsons, the early songs full of his instantly recognisable style, with keyboards and guitars merging together before a drop into soft rock with smooth vocals and careful but soaring guitars.

As with The Secret, Parsons brought guest vocalists on board here, which seems unmistakable on transitions like the one from Don't Fade Now to Give 'em My Love, two vocal songs that feature a pair of completely different voices. There are fewer guests here though, the seven from last time reduced to three this, with one caveat that I'll get to later, the three being Tommy Shaw of Styx on Uroboros, but James Durbin of American Idol on Give 'em My Love and David Pack of Ambrosia on I Won't Be Led Astray. Shaw's contribution fits comfortably with his background, but I know Durbin from harder, heavier material, such as his stint in Quiet Riot and his solo Durbin album from 2021, The Beast Awakens.

As that might suggest, this does play very much on the softer side. The Secret, which I surely ought to wonder was written for the previous album of that name, is bouncy, while Uroboros, which I first heard separately as a single, is the sort of mildly progressive rock that I know Parsons for, but then it gets softer and softer. Sure, there are effortlessly strong guitar solos dotted throughout, which shouldn't surprise anyone, but we can't help but wonder what Parsons would sound like if he took a more daring, less safe approach to his music nowadays.

There are moments early, such as with Uroboros and they show up later too. You are the Light has a perkier outlook, with nice Fleetwood Mac-esque harmonies. Halos brings up the keyboards, in a progressive pop fashion and I liked the new wave rhythms and the samples on a first time through but it got better with every repeat. It's this track and, to a lesser degree, Uroboros, that reminds us of just how great the Alan Parsons Project was on so many albums in the seventies and eighties. Had Parsons filled this album with songs like those, I'd be celebrating a return to form rather than highlighting a second underwhelming release in a row.

What else I should mention here is that there's a folk element here that I wasn't expecting. That's there on Don't Fade Now, which feels like a British folk song we might hear someone singing on a stool in a rural pub, and it's especially there later on Goin' Home, merely one that happens to be orchestrated with keyboards. It's an odd departure from the two styles in play here but there's a reason for that and it ties to it being a song dating back to 1922 that became the base for Antonín Dvořák's New World symphony.

I'm sure there are deeper ties here, beyond the album's title, but it's been a while since I've heard that symphony and don't recognise anything beyond the melody on Goin' Home. Certainly, that's not as odd an inclusion here as the closing track, an incredibly accurate cover of a Ronettes' single, Be My Baby, with vocals from a female vocalist I can't find a reference to but who's certainly up to the task at hand. And here's the caveat I mentioned earlier, because as good as this song is and as good as this vocalist is, it feels utterly out of place here.

So, this is definitely better than The Secret but it's a strangely structured album. The best tracks, a combination of the rockier and folkier material, are early and late, with a bundle of soporofic stuff in between. This would have been better with its middle eviscerated and its closer ditched, maybe to be released separately as the tribute to Ronnie Spector I presume it was meant to be, given her passing in January of this year. However, putting that all together means some easy 7/10 material and some easy 5/10 songs too, so I'll split the difference and go with another 6/10.

Marillion - An Hour Before It's Dark (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 4 Mar 2022
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This is my first Marillion review at Apocalypse Later, so I should get this out there and then never mention it again. I discovered rock music in 1984 and Marillion were one of the first bands that I'd called my favourite. Script for a Jester's Tear is still one of my top ten albums of all time. B-Sides Themselves isn't far behind it. I know Grendel by heart. Those songs were all shaped by Fish, their idiosyncratic lead vocalist and the arbiter of their uniquely poetic lyrics. But, he's long gone. Sure, Steve Hogarth is still the new fish in the band, but he's been there since 1989, which is thirty-three years and counting. Fish only managed seven and he wasn't their original singer anyway. Let's get over this idiocy, people.

Now, I haven't kept up with Marillion the way I should have done. I couldn't name you the greatest songs of Steve Hogarth's era the way a friend of mine surely could, but I certainly enjoyed what he brought to Seasons End and I've heard and appreciated odd tracks here and there in the decades since that album. This is the first time I've sat down to listen to a full Marillion album since maybe Holidays in Eden and I'm seriously impressed. Sure, they've moved firmly away from the technical intricacies of Van der Graaf Generator and seventies Genesis to a more commercial sound, but it's still prog and it's still really good stuff. You Can Learn nails its groove and Murder Machines has a magnificent sweep.

The thing is that it's hard to compare this to anyone except Marillion themselves, which I can't do because I'm not familiar enough with their last few decades. To my ears, there's more Pink Floyd here than Genesis, but this certainly isn't a Pink Floyd album. There's Magnum in there too when Be Hard on Yourself kicks in, though it grows beyond that. Hogarth came to Marillion from a new wave background and, while I wouldn't say there's new wave here per se, there's certainly a dose of contemporary art rock in the current sound as well, a Coldplay or Radiohead element. Mostly, they're simply Marillion, which goes an awful long way to explaining how they've maintained such a dedicated fanbase.

There are two sides to this album, but I'm not talking the first and second halves for a change. The bookends are multi-part suites that aren't as epic as they might seem, in three, four or five parts. Reprogram the Gene may have the most delineated parts, but they only add up to a seven minute song. Be Hard on Yourself is nine, Sierra Leone eleven and Care a fuller, more fleshed out fifteen but, as I remember Marillion doing in the past, these suites are also individual songs tied together. I have no problem pulling a part from this song and a part from that as highlights.

The other side to the album are the songs in the middle, which are more coherent as single tracks and so aren't broken up at all. Why Marillion separated them like this, I don't know, but I like the approach, because Murder Machines is the clear standout for me here and, while I liked the early two suites, they felt like they were building towards this song as much as the brief intro listed as a separate piece, Only a Kiss. Three minutes into Murder Machines, we're floating on a sonic wave, every aspect of this band combining effortlessly into magic. I wanted this song to go on and on.

The other major song in the middle of the album is The Crow and the Nightingale, a real exercise in dynamic play. It's a wave too, but one that waxes and wanes rather than maintains. While I have no hesitation calling it the lesser of the two songs, it has a grandeur to it that makes me think it'll argue with me about that. It's still strong though and you'll never hear me complain when a song allows Steve Rothery to let loose on his guitar.

After that, the album tails off gradually with two suites that are softer in nature and so remind of how Pink Floyd built their Wish You Were Here album. An Hour Before It's Dark sometimes echoes that approach, putting the more straightforward songs at its heart, between its sprawling suites, but sometimes flips it on its head, making those sprawling suites clearly vocal. It's an interesting approach and it seems more meaningful the more I think about it. Which probably means that it didn't enter into the band's minds when they put it together.

I like this album, but it's a very easy album to like. On the surface, it's smooth and unchallenging, though there are depths to be found if you dive in and explore beyond the surface (a shoutout to Pete Trewavas's basswork on Maintenance Drugs right here). It's also wildly optimistic, shorn of its edges and infused with optimism. Reprogram the Gene's lyrics open: "I don't want to be a boy. I don't want to be a girl. I want to be happy, I want to be clever and no pain whatsoever." That's this album in a nutshell.

Styx - Crash of the Crown (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 18 Jun 2021
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"We will not give in," sing however many vocalists Styx have harmonising on the opener, The Fight of Our Lives, and this album feels like they mean it. I knew Styx were still going, because I saw them live at a corporate event I was working back in 2005, right after they released Big Bang Theory, which was a covers album. However, I hadn't noticed any further studio output from them since until now. A dozen years on, they did release a concept album called The Mission and I'm not convinced that this, which is their seventeenth studio release, isn't another one.

Certainly it feels like one, even if I couldn't follow anything more than a vague theme. I found myself focusing far more on the melodies than the words they carry, and the general pomp behind the music. The fact that a song like Hold Back the Darkness is bookended by sound effects, like it's a visual piece, and that it's followed by Winston Churchill's recognisable voice in samples on Save Us from Ourselves, helps that epic feel. The former has a Pink Floyd feel to it too, which doesn't stop us thinking concept.

I've read that their chief influence was the Beatles this time out, the approach being to conjure up an album like Abbey Road where every song was complete in itself and didn't repeat anything, but which felt as a whole like a single entity. The Beatles weren't my initial thought, though they certainly leap to mind quickly on songs like Our Wonderful Lives, not only because of the vocal melodies but through a neat use of brass. Mostly the styles here are more rock than pop and they're often reminiscent of an early Queen album, but I think that they nailed their Abbey Road idea. The more I listen to it, the more I hear the Beatles, especially in the melodies and especially because Styx have more than one lead vocalist too.

This isn't as varied as something like Sheer Heart Attack (then again, what is?) but a neatly consistent variety lends it an almost ironic coherence. Oddly, for an album that's riddled through with old school prog, albeit commercial prog, everything is notably short. The album only runs a mere whisker over 43 minutes but it contains fifteen songs, the longest reaching exactly four minutes; the shortest doesn't even reach half a minute.

That longest song is Common Ground and it does some serious building, but it's the title track that I'd call the most epic here. It's also the most Queen of all these songs, albeit with an overt Styx keyboard solo. Let's not forget that Styx have been around for a very long time indeed. By the time they got to The Grand Illusion in 1977, their first multi-platinum album, they had already put out six others, three by the end of 1973, by which point Queen only had one. It's easy to see how the two bands fed ideas to each other back then, before either was truly famous.

As you might expect from everything I've said thus far, this feels less like a new Styx album and more like an old one that we merely haven't heard before. It's primarily the crisp production that's holding me back from wondering if I really did listen to this back in the mid eighties when I was catching up on a couple of decades of music that I'd suddenly stumbled onto. However, there some modern sounds in here too. Long Live the King kicks off with an almost Tool-like riff and Coming Out the Other Side may begin with a sitar, like it's the Summer of Love, but it moves quickly into a more modern beat.

I should probably emphasise here that I like how this sounds like an old album that's just new to me. It feels vibrant and lively, as if it was made by a young Styx, even though guitarist Tommy Shaw joined as long ago as 1975 and both bassist Chuck Panozzo and guitarist James Young both have three years on him with the band. Drummer Todd Sucherman and keyboard player Ricky Phillips didn't show up until the nineties but have still been in Styx since the prior millennium. Ricky Phillips, the full time bassist (Panozzo is a part timer nowadays and only played here on Our Wonderful Lives and Lost at Sea) joined in 2003, leaving Will Evankovich, guitarist and soundscape creator as a very new fish, brought on in 2021.

At the end of the day, if you like Styx, you ought to like this, and if you like really old Styx, you may well like it even more.

Touch - Tomorrow Never Comes (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Melodic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Apr 2021
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Touch's claim to fame is that they were the first band to ever play the Monsters of Rock festival, given that they opened the very first one in 1980, but they were certainly the most melodic rock band on its bill. They recorded two albums, imaginatively titled Touch and Touch II in the early eighties, though it took until 1998 for the second to see release, on The Complete Works I & II. They split up at some point, probably way back in the early eighties, but got back together last year, with the original line-up. The result is this album and it makes me want to go back to refresh myself on its predecessors.

Given that I don't remember them right now, I'll point out that, here at least, they play very much in a melodic rock vein, crafting catchy songs like Fire and Ice and Run for Your Life with decent riffs, plenty of keyboards and strong vocal hooks. Songs like Let It Come reminded me of mid-seventies Jefferson Airplane, especially when whoever's singing really gets going late in the song, aiming at what Mickey Thomas did on Freedom at Point Zero. Nobody's actually credited for vocals, presumably because all four members sing and presumably swap lead duties. I couldn't tell.

They soften up too at points, unsurprisingly given the later work of songwriter Mark Mangold writing for artists like Michael Bolton and Laura Branigan. He even had a top ten hit for Cher, though he wrote it for Bolton and Branigan recorded it first. Trippin' Over Shadows is unmistakably soft rock and it fits well on this album, because that's hardly a rare approach. Wanna Hear You Say starts out heavier but becomes very soft indeed during the midsection, especially given where the keyboards go. This is pop music at points, even if it's built like a rock song.

More importantly, Touch also veer into other genres and they're certainly at their most interesting to me when they drift into progressive rock, as they do on Swan Song. This is easily my favourite song on the album and it's also the longest at almost eight minutes, reminding at points of Boston with hard rock guitars but prominent keyboards. They approach a sort of Steely Dan-esque jazz rock at points as well, such as on Scream at the Sky, and that can be really effective. It all helps give the album quite a variety. There's even a nod to funk rock at the end of the exquisitely catchy Try to Let Go.

Mangold is definitely very obvious on the keyboards and, I'm guessing, the most frequent lead vocals. Behind him, Craig Brooks definitely makes his presence known on guitar. Even at its softest, this gives him constant opportunities and he takes advantage of them. I particularly enjoyed his soloing, which is very old school in the sense that he doesn't feel the need to particularly show off but knows exactly how to add another level to a song in his solo anyway. Doug Howard and Glen Kithcart are reliable on bass and drums respectively. Again, they both avoid doing anything flash in favour of doing what the songs need them to do and they do that well.

It's great to see an old band back with their original line-up and I hope it felt good for them. It doesn't look like they left the music business when Touch split. Certain Mangold was busy as a songwriter and performer; Howard was perhaps even more busy recording with names of the calibre of Edgar Winter, Todd Rundgren and Roy Buchanan (or so says Wikipedia; I'm not seeing that on Discogs, though he has a lot of songwriting credits with Utopia); and Brooks played with Michael Bolton and sang on a Roger Glover solo album. Only Kithcart seems to have vanished until this reunion.

And, however much or however little they've done musically since Touch split up, this feels vibrant and fresh. It certainly doesn't feel like a first album in forty years, which is exactly what it is. I guess, the album title notwithstanding, tomorrow does eventually come. And, while I don't remember those early albums, welcome back, folks!

Aqviles - Memoria Fósil (2021)

Country: Chile
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Mar 2021
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There's so much fantastic music coming out of Europe at the moment that I could fill two slots per day from that continent alone, but I'll keep trying to cover as much territory as I can. And if could focus on a different continent, it would be South America rather than North America, because, while they have far fewer "major bands" and a much shorter history, there's a freshness in the music coming out of all the countries down there, a vibrancy and a sense of invention that really appeals to me. Throwing on a new album from somewhere in South America often serves as a palate cleanser for me, replenishing my faith in music as an art form and not just an industry.

Case in point: Aqviles, a progressive rock band from Santiago, Chile who have been around since 2004 and are on their second studio album, after 2015's El Último Hombre Bala. Their sound is fascinating to me because it feels soft and laid back even when it isn't. There's a lightness to it that I'm hearing a lot in South American albums lately, but this isn't surface music. Radio en Alerta, for instance, which is the first song proper, lasts under four minutes, but features some energetic bass work behind patient guitar, some unusual time signatures and a really cool slowdown in the second half that almost turns doomy, without ever being metal. There's a lot here, even when there doesn't seem to be.

Aqviles are a rock band, but I call them progressive rock because of all the experimentation going on in these songs. At first glance, some are soft rock and some hard rock, the overall spectrum the band goes through ranging from soft jazz rock in the Steely Dan vein to harder grooves rather reminiscent of Budgie. That's quite the range, but it's consistent in tone, even when it's flirting with other genres, like funk on Espectador de Terrors, or Spectator of Terror; pop on Astro, which is driven by a riff that almost feels like Robert Palmer levels of perky; or jazz on at least part of most of these ten songs.

I have to call out Fernando Urra first, because his bass is dynamic and so obvious that it often becomes the lead instrument. Diálogos is well named, because it's almost a dialogue between abrasive guitar and warm bass, with the vocals a third wheel. This one makes me wonder just how much the guitar of Diego Lillo is doing, because I'm starting to believe that what I initially thought were keyboards must be the guitar with a different tone. He uses quite a few, including a beautiful fluid one for overt solos like the one early in Espectador de Terrors that counters the ominous bass with its purity, or early in Surcos en la Piel, or Furrows in the Skin, which is almost pleading.

That leaves Rodrigo Pérez, who's a versatile drummer and needs to be to play along with this pair. He doesn't seem to do a lot compared to Urra and Lillo but, the more I listen to this, the more the drums start to emerge as an equal partner, not just the support behind the others. After all, he's credited on percussion as well as drums and there are points where he shifts from the latter to the former for the more ethnic sounding rhythms. He does a lot too, even though the gaps in his spotlight halfway through Astro are just as important as his beats.

I should also add that, if all the guitarwork wasn't enough, Lillo is also the vocalist, making Aqviles a trio. Maybe that's why this music breathes so much. However much these three musicians do, we can easily follow any of them when we choose. I love when I can listen to a song as a song, but then listen to it again as a vocal performance and a guitar performance and a drum performance. It's rare in the 21st century to be able to listen to a song as a bass performance, but I'm really happy that I can track Urra's contribution to this album without hardship.

Like many albums that seem light and airy at first glance but quickly highlight that there's really a lot going on, this is one to explore through multiple listens. Like many such albums, it's also tough to call out favourite tracks, because it's always growing. The bookends, Radio en Alerta and Brumidor, stood out for me first. Then Espectador de Terrors refused to be ignored. Surcos en la Piel staked its claim. Astro was obvious from moment one but it grew over multiple listens beyond that adrenaline shot of a riff. And so on and so on. Every song spread out and grew on me. And, in my book, that means that this is a real keeper.