THE GHOST MOON ORCHESTRA

After a couple of albums that followd the departure of Heather Findlay and that personally I haven't liked much, Bryan Josh tries to resurrect the old successful formula with Olivia Sparnenn and Anne-Marie Helder replacing Heather and Angela Gordon. The result is better than the previous two attempts. The songs seem to fit more with Olivia's voice which is absolutely good but is different from Heather.

The main problem with this album is that Josh seems to be running out of ideas; a number of songs are nothing else then rewriting of songs from his first solo project. "Drops Of The Sun" seems a cover of "When Cowboys Ruled The World". It's ok, it's not the first time that a composer recycles his own ideas, but choosing to represent the weaker trakcs of his solo album is a bad choice.

As usual, despite having excellent singers in the band he insists in singing. I understand that whoever writes a song likes to sing it, too.. But it's a band. If you have better singers available, just give up and let them do their job.

Don't get me wrong. There's also good music here. It's just that some songs sound "already listened". Helder and Grffiths are of course in perfect sintony having been together in PANIC ROOM and KARNATAKA. What is really missed is the arrangements of Angela Gordon. Anyway the tracks are well played. Josh and Davison aren't surely the last of the prog guitarists, and Iain Jennigs does a very good job as usual.

What is different from the previous albums is that there' more rock than usual. The band's style is less close to Pink Floyd and parts of King of the Valley sound closer to Deep Purple than to PF. There are highlights. One is "Things That We Notice", a long song that shows many influences but not one in particular. There is also a song like "Wild Eyed Skies". On this song Olivia makes an excellent vocal performance and the song itself is ate the level of the best Mostly Autumn. The guitar solo is reminding of "Mother Nature" as well as the change of scale which is similar to those on the final of "The Spirit of The Autumn Past".

The closer starts like a lullaby, a little boring initially, but the second half of the song is itroduced by a Pink Floyd like passage and ends in a guitar solo of the kind that made this band famous at the end of the 90s.

So it's not a masterpiece album, but it's not a waste. Surely better than the previous two, just not at the level of albums like The Last Bright Light. If you are new with Mostly Autumn, start with that.