The last couple of Flower Kings records have been just that. In fact, the last Transatlantic was too. Roine Stolt has been trading in dad-prog forever, but lately it's become even more of a dad-joke. The songs drag on, but there are rarely the musical motifs and hooks to make the trip worth it. It's all pleasant music to listen to, and he's apparently still got tons of guitar solos left to play, but at the end of the day it doesn't hand on a framework that shows it off. It's a lump of dirty clothes waiting to be picked up and folded.
Things come out of the gates well, with "The Great Pretender" and "World Gone Crazy" both being song-oriented tracks that balance the instrumental play with some nice vocal melodies. They're the sort of thing where I think The Flower Kings are at their best. But just when it seems things are going so well, we get "Blinded", which starts off interesting with some jazzy saxophone, but then drags on for eight minutes with an extremely long sax solo that completely loses me long before we get to the end. Not having enough song around it is exactly what prog gets criticized for, and this track is a prime example of it. It sounds like guys playing because they love playing, without giving a toss if it's going to be interesting for a listener. That needs to be taken into account when you're putting something on a record you.... want people to listen to.
The same is true of "A Million Stars". The song is nice enough as it goes along, but then it stops, and there are still almost three minutes left. That time is filled with ambient sounds and a few guitar notes. It's essentially wasted time that contributes nothing musical to the proceedings. So please tell me why this album needs to be so damn long when it has time to spend on nonsense. That's an easy edit to make, and there are more of them just like it.
I point that out because of what I said about raising the bar. A double album needs to justify every single second of its existence. Like every one I've ever encountered, this doesn't. A single album with filler material is bad, but a double is even worse. It's worse precisely because the contours are there to see the really good single album it could be. Rather than being a case of not having enough good songs to fill out an album, this is a case of indeed having one in the bag, and then watering it down to the point it would fail a drug test for being diluted.
If that sounds harsh, it's because it is. Artists need to remember the audience's time is valuable too, and albums like this treat it as though we have nothing better we could be doing. Prog is pompous, but this particular bit of self-importance pisses me off. There's a stretch in "Peacock On Parade" and "Revolution" where we go nearly ten minutes without a vocal. There are solos, an ambient build, and no structure whatsoever. It might have been fun for Roine to play, but it sure as hell isn't fun to listen to. Not for that long.
And that's the story of the album as a whole. There are good moments, and good songs, don't get me wrong. But we've got 45 minutes of good Flower Kings songs rattling around in a 90 minute package. Being only half good wouldn't be enough for a recommendation no matter what the length of a record, and for one this long, it gets marked down even further. Unless you are a die-hard prog fan, I don't see how I can tell you to listen to a single second of this.
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