Ranking The Transatlantic Albums

With the fall release schedule rather light on interesting albums, I have found myself filling time by going back through my prog phase, seeing if it is indeed my patience that has changed, or if prog itself has evolved. As it turns out, the prog I used to like is still quit enjoyable, so if my patience is wearing thin on longer experiences, part of that is due to the music not being engaging enough to override my sensors.

Of all the prog, I have been most affectionate over the years to Transatlantic, whom I routinely called my favorite prog band. But are they really? That's not an easy question to answer, because as I look at their five albums (the odds of there ever being another one aren't looking great at the moment), it doesn't add up to an overwhelming amount of music I love. That might be true, as is the fact that putting them in order was one of the easier rankings I have done. There was no debate for me on these placements.

1. Bridge Across Forever

My default answer for my favorite prog album, this one is an obvious choice as Transatlantic's best. The two epics work wonders as a cohesive whole, sharing motifs and excellent melodies, all while being dramatic and heavy (for them). They are the band's best epics, and get balanced out by their Beatles fan-fiction suite, which is exactly the sort of breather we need among all of the prog excess. It's a long album that can be broken up in chunks, and solidified the Transatlantic sound, turning them from a project into a band. To this day, I don't think any of the members have ever topped this one.

2. Kaleidoscope

Many fans are colder on this album than I am, but perhaps because it reminds me so much of "Bridge Across Forever", I find it rather charming. Sure, we can hear the band beginning to splinter, but they were still bringing great ideas to the table. "Shine" and "Black As The Sky" are their best short songs, and "Into The Blue" is the best written of their epics. The complaints lodge in the title track, which is half an hour of random ideas shoehorned together, with little effort made to properly segue them and make sense. The good is good enough for me to forgive the bad, and after all, this was my Album Of The Year when it came out.

3. The Whirlwind

This is another case of the good outweighing the bad. The good sections of this record are as good as anything the band ever did, but I've never exactly been a fan of the construction of the record. It is clearly separate tracks with a bit of a theme running through the lyrics, and not one giant song. That's true of almost everything 'epic' Neal Morse has been a part of, but is especially true on this record, as throwing in a song about his father in the middle of a concept record only pulls back the curtain to show these guys aren't putting nearly as much thought into these things as they want us to believe. That aside, It's a great hour-plus of music, which was only made better when we consider something else....

4. SMPT:E

I wasn't in the scene when this came out, so I don't have any nostalgia for how it influenced the next decade of prog. What I can say is that while there is certainly good music to be found here, I can't rate any album too highly that spends eighteen minutes on a cover song. I'm sorry, but when you're as good as these guys are, and as prolific as they are, I don't want to hear someone else's song. Sure, the record is still long enough without taking that into account, but it's there, and it's annoying. I also do legitimately think they did better work afterward, so this isn't merely sour grapes sinking to the bottom.

5. The Absolute Universe

This album. Look, there are some good songs here, but it is clearly their weakest batch, as none of them members had been making albums on their own that I liked for a number of years. The bigger issue, though, is that I still don't know how to talk about this record. Released as two different versions, with different track listings, and different vocals and instrumentation even on some of the shared songs, it's a giant mess that asks you to sit through two and a half hours of music to get the full experience. I'm sorry, but I'm not listening to your album twice, just because you couldn't agree on how to put it together. It was stupid then, it's stupid now, and it turns a disappointing album into a truly horrible one. It's sad the band is going to likely end on this note, because it's perhaps the worst, most prog decision I've ever come across.