The news of the disappearance of guitarist Owain Roberts, and the huge and ongoing fan campaign to spread the word and help find him has rather overshadowed the fact that the band have a new record out. Indeed, the band sent out the signed pre-order copies just days before he disappeared.
Although the band released a live album “The Bottle of Gettysburg” in 2011, and the album of reworkings of existing songs “Acoustically Speaking” late in 2010, this four track EP is the first release of all-new material since “Adverse Camber” two years ago. It’s also the first studio recording by the slimmed-down five piece version of the band with Owain Roberts as sole guitarist and Rachel Cohen as sole lead vocalist.
The opener “One By One” sets the tone. Beginning with chiming guitar and a vocal melody with an echo of their earlier “Dark Angel”, it combines atmospheric verses with a rockier chorus and a brief instrumental break of interplaying guitar and keys. It’s all over in less than four minutes, but seems to pack an awful lot of music into so short a time. In contrast, “Pale Criminal” is an out-and-out ballad. With another beautiful vocal melody from Rachel Cohen it’s a song that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Karnataka’s “Delicate Flame of Desire”.
“Apophenia” and “20 Grams” round off the EP in similar vein, mid-tempo numbers combining delicate vocal melodies with restrained instrumental virtuosity from Owain Roberts and keyboardist Tony Turrell. Lyrics cover things like “the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data” and Duncan MacDougall’s rather strange theories of the weight of the human soul. Not your typical rock’n'roll fare at all.
The whole EP has a softer, more pared-back sound, with shorter songs reining in the prog-metal excesses of their recent past. There’s still plenty of depth in the arrangements, with a few nods to latter-day Marillion and Rush. But now Rachel Cohen’s vocals are given much more space to breathe, no longer in any danger of being swamped by the instrumentation. It’s a case of less being more. Even if none of the four songs quite reach the highest points of the first two albums, the result is nevertheless a more coherent and focussed effort than their last studio album, and it takes a very different musical direction from their early work.
The band are back in the studio now recording a full-length album slated for release in September, which will be the band’s first release under their new record deal Esoteric Antenna. In the meantime, this EP, their last self-released recording under the imprint of Comet Records, is available from the band’s website.
I’d agree with that assessment of the EP, although I’m particularly taken by the song Apophenia. Its the EP’s Script Switch Trigger and takes a bunch of very decent songs to a higher level. My personal preference for The Reasoning is for a more melodic sound with a bit less metal, where Rachel Cohen has the time and space to really express her vocal.
The Reasoning album I like the best is the acoustic album. I play it a lot. Apart from Shadows Of The Mind, the best songs from the first three albums are all on there. And it works. I’d like to hear more of these kind of albums.
There’s a great moment in the instrumental break of “Apophenia” that sounds like Alex Lifeson jamming with Mark Kelly.
Agree about “Acoustically Speaking”. It’s a great album, for exactly the reasons you say, even though I’m no sure about the Caribbean sounds on “Within Cold Glass”. Do wonder if the pared-down sound of “And Another Thing” is trying to create a similar vibe, although I’d like to see them do another unplugged record. Matt needs to get a stand-up bass, though