SPOCK'S BEARD

This self-titled Spock’s Beard album is their latest, or the third after the departure of Neal Morse. Given that I haven’t heard any of Neal era albums, and after experiencing the post-Neal era with Octane, I became more interested in their music even more. Even their latest works aren’t considered as a good as their earlier (at least that was I know so far), they still create great music and albums.

And now, as for the tracks:

‘On a Perfect Day’: A good opening track, with some nice keyboard and acoustic guitar in the beginning and some beautiful guitar melody in the middle. This song also has a nice melody, as well as good vocal which make it a really an enjoyable song.

‘Skeletons at the Feast’: Simply beautiful. This is a great instrumental track which shows great musicianship by Spock’s Beard. A bit heavy at the beginning, and then turned into a nice track with the keyboard works, bass lines, and guitar solos. This track is likely one of the highlights of the album.

‘Is This Love’: This is a heavier track that sounds like some classic rock. Personally, I don’t think that this is a bad track at all; it just didn’t really work well with the rest of the album. ‘All That’s Left’: A quite nice and enjoyable soft track.

‘With Your Kiss’: Another great track. This song is likely divided into three sections. The opening section of the song starts slowly, with some nice tunes, and vocal. Then on the middle section, you’ll hear some percussion beats that give you a jungle-like atmosphere to the song. This section has a quite nice keyboard and guitar sounds as well as the percussion. The ending section of this track has some great guitar melody and solos.

‘Sometimes They Stay, Sometimes They Go’: A blues sounding like song. This is an average track, not bad but not really good either. Still a quite enjoyable track though. ‘The Slow Crash Landing Man’: This is a quite nice track. It sounds like a pop-rock song, but still a good track.

‘Wherever You Stand’: Another heavier track. This one has a bit of melody from ‘Surfing Down the Avalanche’, only played with faster tempo. There're some nice keyboard solos here. ‘Hereafter’ is a beautiful piano track. Great melody and vocal.

‘As Far as the Mind Can See’: The ultimate track of this album! This is a great epic which consists of four parts. The first part, ‘Dreaming in the Age of Answers’ starts soft and then paced up a bit with some nice melody. Then the tempo becomes a bit faster, and the music turn into a jazz-like song in the second part, ‘Here’s A Man’. Nice keyboard works in the middle section of this part. The third part, ‘They Know We Know’ starts with some drum beats. This part has a nice and catchy melody. The epic is closed nicely with ‘Stream of Unconsciousness’. The tempo in this part is fast in the beginning, and then slows down near the end and ended with some great keyboard sounds. This epic is really a stand out from this album. Well arranged and composed.

‘Rearranged’: This album is closed nicely by this track. Opens softly, the pace then builds up throughout the song. Nice melody provided from keyboard, bass, guitar, drum and vocals.

Overall, this is a great album. Apart from ‘Is This Love’ (which actually isn’t that bad), there’re lots of great tracks in this album. There’re bit of varieties in styles too, like pop rock, blues, or jazz. I like this one equally (if not better) as Octane. Spock’s Beard have shown that they are going in the right way with this album.