Music Review - Dave Kerzner - New World

Yet another fine album that I need to listen to again.

Recently I was in my car listening to “Comfortably Numb” on the radio and I started to wonder how many times I’ve heard this song in my life. Two hundred? A thousand? Sure, it’s a great song but wouldn’t it be great if Pink Floyd put out some new music? Fat chance. It’s a good thing, then, that there’s someone like Dave Kerzner to fill the gap. Kerzner is a man who loves Pink Floyd more than most fish love water but fortunately he’s also such an amazing songwriter and gifted musician that the music on New World is no flat Floyd imitation. Instead it breathes and excites with a life and character of its own, though Floyd fans will appreciate that it sounds like it is a long-lost recording made between Momentary Lapse of Reason and Division Bell. The friends joining Kernzer speaks to his standing in the music community. Not only do classic rock prog-legends Steve Hackett and Keith Emerson lend their talents but former bandmate (and adopted Fort Wayne son/Sweetwater alum) Nick D’Virgilio plays most of the drums.

The fun starts with the ten minute “Stranded (Part 1-5)”, an expansive, mysterious adventure that, above all others, sounds like a missing piece of Darkside of the Moon, owing greatly to the wailing female vocals. The song ends with an invigorating chanting-vocal part that is surely a tribute to the song “Shadow Self” by former bandmate, the late, great Kevin Gilbert. Stepping out of the “progressive epic” mode is “The Lie”, an achingly beautiful song that could easily be a single on rock radio, especially with its heartfelt and perfectly restrained guitar solos. Another amazingly catchy rock song is “Nothing,” which sounds like a cross between E.L.O. and early Asia and culminates in a snide chorus of “All I need from you is nothing.” “Under Control” begins as a shadowy whisper but erupts into an insistent, pounding and creepy chorus of “I… am… under control,” though it sounds as if it’s more of a last desperate hope than a confident statement. Immediately following is the instrumental “Crossing of Fates” featuring a Keith Emerson moog solo. Mournful horns predict dark skies while stabs of guitars put one off balance in this cinematic masterpiece that is enthralling throughout. The album ends with the second half of “Stranded”, packing in many changes in mood and tempo into its seventeen minute length, at times driving yet restrained (as exemplified by Pink Floyd) and other times chilling, somber, plaintiff, and hopeful.

If you can’t tell, this reviewer thinks that New World is an astounding album, possibly the best I’ve heard in the last six months, and I’m not even a huge Pink Floyd fan! New World incorporates a breath-taking kaleidoscope of sounds and textures, wrapping them around skillfully written songs that catch in the brain while at the same time rousing the heart.

Review - Spock's Beard - Day For Night

Score one for automated album recommendations! I can't believe I only sorta-liked this album... it's amazing all the way through! This was back before I admitted my love for progressive anything (rock, pop, metal, polka) so I was probably deep in denial.

I first heard of this group when CDNow recommended it based on my past purchases. Feeling adventurous, I shelled out some plastic and placed my order. At first, I found it stiff and orchestrated with too much head music and too little feel. There was too much late-era Kansas and the songs all seemed to nag at me like I had heard them before in some form or other. Knowing that sometimes "prog-rock" takes a while to grow, I made a copy for my car and decided to let it fester a while. A month later, I find it much more enjoyable than originally but still somewhat stuffy and not as alarmingly original as I had been led to believe it would be. That said, there is a lot of good in this album.

Spock's Beard is made up of five top-notch studio musicians who can honestly rock, though most of the album seems like it has been carefully laid out beforehand. Missing are the extended guitar and keyboard outings most associate with progressive rock, though in true prog-rock style many of the songs are seven and nine minutes long. This is not to say that all the songs are massive suites for of the thirteen tracks, about half are shorter, more song/melody oriented and about as radio friendly as prog-rock in the 90s can be. Their sound is a decent mixture of Yes and Gentle Giant with some very nice vocal harmonies a la' Crosby Stills and Nash. And let's not forget the dash of Cheap Trick! Of the tracks, I liked "Gibberish" with it's vocal and instrumental fugue and the tasty jazz trio found at the beginning of "Crack the Big Sky". Instruments such as saxophone, french horn and cello make appearances throughout the album, bringing with them some refreshing novelty. Perhaps the most touching song is "Can't Get It Wrong", a quiet piano-driven song that would have really gotten me as a typical teen with lyrics of alienation such as " I don't want to be alone anymore/ Why can't I be somebody else?/ Why must I see through these strange eyes?" The album seems geared for both the prog-rock and modern rock audiences and while both would probably enjoy this release if they got a chance to hear it, the album will probably miss targets.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, January 2000.

Review - Spock's Beard - V

This is the Spock's Beard album that grabbed me but good! Yeah, I liked Day For Night and often reach for it to this day, but this is the one that is perfection in my ears.

Well scoop me off the floor and call me Nancy! The first time I heard Spock's Beard was their last album, Day For Night. While the songs eventually grew on me, I still find the album to be a bit melodramatic. This time around, though, I was hooked from the very first note.

The album opens with a mournful grouping of cello and oboe in a chamber music-like theme. This soon explodes into the sixteen minute "At The End of the Day" which is filled with some great melodies and guitar rhythms, not to mention some badbutt bass playing. Following this huge, incredible song are four more, each one clocking in at around four to six minutes. In particular, I enjoyed the schizophrenic "Thoughts (Part II)" which begins with a soft melody and the lyrics "I thought it might be really great / To show you how I feel inside / Then I think... maybe not". The song kicks in with a wicked bass and drum riff that is interrupted briefly by a cappella fugues and string quartets before building to a heated rock frenzy. All this in under five minutes! The album caps off with its greatest achievement, a twenty-seven minute six-part opus entitled "The Great Nothing." While most bands flounder in anything longer than four minutes, the long form is the natural habitat of Spock's Beard. There is a common lyrical theme that permeates this song as well as melodies that resurface periodically and tie the entire song together. At the risk of turning off would-be listeners, this song is quite symphonic in its approach to melody and form, and yet it still rocks and rocks hard. Amazingly, none of the songs on the album are bloated: every note is there for a reason. As an added bonus, the singer does not have the standard prog-rock operatic voice that unfortunately sends my teeth a'grinding.

Normally prog-rock doesn't flip me wig. I try to listen to prog-bands and can appreciate their stunning musicianship but soon grow tired of the poorly written songs, lack of attractive melody, and pretentious "intellectual for the sake of being intellectual" lyrics. With this latest album, Spock's Beard blows all that away. Like Kansas, they are able to create music that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying, writing melodic songs that are more than just exercises in endurance. These are simply great rock songs with enough of a progressive edge to grab your ear and make you cry like a schoolgirl!

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, September 2000.

Review - Spock's Beard - Snow

All the Spock's Beard albums are filled with great music but when I get a hankerin' to have my beard scratched I reach for almost any album BUT this one. Oh Spocky, why did you have to go out with a double instead of a home run?

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Spock's Beard is a band combines the progressive elements of Yes and King Crimson with astounding song writing and immediately pleasing melodies in a way that satisfies on many levels. I really loved their last album and I mean that in the Biblical sense. The songs were inventive and catchy, melodic yet progressive, and they always hit the spot, even the thirty-minute opus based on the short life of Kevin Gilbert. It seems that the band was just ramping up to Snow, a double CD concept album that has been compared to Tommy and Lamb Lies Down. The set comes in a nice hardcover book with lots of great photographs that illustrate the story of Snow, a teenaged albino with the gift to discern and change the future, as he wrestles with his changing identity from outsider to messiah to freak and back to outsider, all the while struggling to maintain his identity and humanity.

Here is where I get conflicted. There is some incredible music on this album that surpasses anything Spock's Beard has attempted but there seems to be quite a bit of filler. The first CD holds the lion's share of good tunes. "Made Alive/Overture" is perfect Spock's Beard with lots of intricately interwoven melodies in true overture fashion. "Stranger In A Strange Land" introduces Snow with acoustic guitars while "Long Time Suffering", also tasty, includes the obligatory a cappella passage. "The 39th Street Blues" is another outstanding track with some mind-blowing guitar sounds backed by grinding, distorted organs, interlaced with some Zeppelin influence and gutsy saxophone to round out the jazzy, aggressive rhythm. With acoustic guitar and flutes, the seven-minute "Solitary Soul" packs a wallop with rich Crosby, Stills & Nash vocal harmonies throughout.

A few other gems are to be found on the second disc, such as "4th of July" with a menacing piano and intriguing vocal harmonies, the angry, cathartic "Freak Boy" and "I'm Dying" with it's crunchy guitar riff and plaintive chorus melody. But to my ears there seems to be a lot of padding to make a full second disc, tracks such as "Freak Boy 2", "Devil's Got My Throat Revisited", and "Ladies and Gentleman…", which is a three minute live keyboard solo that contains no discernable melodies found on the rest of the album. While Spock's Beard tends to end their longer songs on a dramatic note, "Made Alive Again/Wind At My Back" is melodramatic and little more than cheerleading, especially at six minutes of the same brief melody played over and over, it is nearly identical to "Wind At My Back" that closed the first CD.

While I am definitely of the camp that keyboards can be used to great effect in rock music, there is just way too much synthesizer in this release. Fans of this instrument will drool at the extensive keyboard solos in the aptly named "All Is Vanity", "Devil's Got My Throat", and the many, many, many other instances that deluge the album, but they just tired me out. I also got the distinct impression that much of the second CD served to propel the story to it's conclusion while not meeting the outlandishly high musical bar that had been set by the first CD and the earlier Spock's Beard albums.

Don't get me wrong. I like this album very much and many of the songs rank among the best Spock's Beard has ever recorded. With some judicious editing to reduce the content to a single CD, this could have topped their last album. As it is, I'd recommend this release to fans of rock opera, keyboard fanatics, and Spock's Beard die-hards, of which I include myself.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, October 2002.

Review - Karma - NDV

A nice little album with some really nice songs. Add another one to the stack of albums for another listen!

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There's an old saying passed around by the old-timers that loosely translated becomes "Beware solo albums." The older village old-timers pass around an even older saying: "Beware solo albums by drummers." Fortunately, there's an even older saying quoted by old-timers on their death beds that when taken literally involves the ingesting of large amounts of guar gum, but the meaning behind this ancient wisdom is that if the music is really good, you can ignore the previous two sayings. While he calls the band Spock's Beard his home, Nick D'Virgilio, the man behind Karma, has beat the skins for bands ranging from Sheryl Crow to Tears For Fears to Genesis. On his debut solo release D'Virgilio presents himself as a talented multi-instrumentalist, playing just about every instrument, and singing, on an album full of songs that cover a wide spread of genres. Progressive rock, blues, fusion, pop, funk, country, alternative, jazz, and all kinds of things in between… they're all here and all done amazingly well. While many solo albums suffer from the "look at how technically proficient I am at all these instruments you never knew I played" syndrome (patent pending), NDV again keeps perfect time by presenting eleven exceedingly well-written songs packed with memorable hooks and melodies, all cloaked in such a broad array of styles that music lovers don't stand a chance of escaping Karma's seductive tendrils. As if this weren't enough to make any musician jealous, D'Virgilio is also an accomplished studio guru so the arrangements are top-notch and the production is crystal clear.

The treasures inside this jewel case are many. "The Game", co-written by deceased musical genius Kevin Gilbert, is a pure aural treat. Pianos and bongos explode into brilliant, melodic vocals with powerful drums in a genre halfway between a power ballad and pure rock. The title track consists only of layered vocals and percussion yet is so full and complete that you'll never miss the guitars, mostly because the chorus will haunt your every waking hour with it's chanting tribal rhythm and lyrics of "You can't hide when your karma follows you." The first three minutes of "The Waters Edge" contain overtones of Queen with solo piano and plaintive vocals but then the cello enters with powerful vocals and an amazing chorus that I would give my left buttock to have written, and you know you're a goner. Feel like a little jazz with your pop? "Dream In Red" fits the bill. For a soul fix try the ballad "Will It Be Me?" or "Come What May" for a classic piano ballad. Pure rock with heavy drums and a thick guitar riff so textured you can almost feel it on your tongue? That would be "Anything", third aisle on the left, right next to the gnarled mass of distortion marked "Forgiven." If progressive power-pop is what makes your life worth getting out of bed, there's "The River Is Wide" or the three-part "Paying The Price" which comes complete with attachments by Yes, Pink Floyd, Kansas and early King's X, all for one low price.

While it's not the greatest thing since pre-cooked pimento loaf, this album does so many things so well that it belongs in eight homes out of ten. Well-crafted, catchy songs backed with solid musicianship and flawless production… to put it simply, this is good stuff!

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, January 2002.

Review - Transatlantic - Bridge Across Forever

I like this one better than their most recent but both are still better than any album by Marvin Suggs and His Amazing Muppephone. Almost.

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Here's a good idea: take four musicians from critically acclaimed but widely unknown melodic progressive bands and make a "supergroup". Now put out an album with only four songs, two of which are almost thirty minutes long. Commercial suicide? Probably. Good eats? Definitely! The suspects in question are multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Neal Morse of Spock's Beard, Flower Kings guitarist Roine Stolt, Marillion bassist Pete Trewavas, and Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy. Last year they released their first album, SMPTe, which received the expected critical acclaim, ensuring this year's follow-up Bridge Across Forever. As a fan of melodic progressive music (as opposed to those bands which only want to show off their technical chops and the song be damned) I held my breath as I spun the CD, hoping for the former but fearing the latter. What I found is a nice amalgam of classic progressive rock and modern pop/rock, lots of memorably, hooky melodies, all presented with astounding musicianship cloaked in the guise of a good song. Actually, to this corn-fed Hoosier, the songs all have the indelible fingerprints of Morse on them (making the album sound quite a bit like the best albums by Spock's Beard) but with everyone sharing the vocal responsibilities, giving some nice variety to the mix. The entire album is very symphonic in it's structure. Each song is made up of a variety of recognizable melodies that cross-pollinate to other tracks, giving a nice cohesion to the album. For instance, the first track opens with a moving, melancholy, Morse-ish orchestral string section that develops into the "motherless children" theme that appears later in the second track. Elements of Dark Side Floyd surface later with the addition of sax and a gospel choir, which are later revoked and replaced with an aggressive rhythm and some really spicy guitar tones. The second track, at a puny thirteen minutes long, has a very "Abby Road side 2" feel about it and is literally brimming with hooks. The title track is a somber respite from the grandiose aural assaults of the previous tracks with Morse singing against piano and strings. The final track, "Stranger In Your Soul" begins with the same string passage that opened the album, albeit in a different key. After many musical changes, drawing from Supertramp to Gabriel-era Genesis to straight ahead 70s arena rock, the song, like the opening track, ends with an overblown, dramatic finale which to my ears sounds a bit overdone: a small Achilles heel for an otherwise remarkable project. As far as I'm concerned, any album that leaves it's songs in my head for days after last vibrating across my eardrums is a winner and this one has plagued me for weeks with it's astounding musicianship and catchy powerprogpop melodies. Now if only the voices would stop.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, November 2001.