TUDOR LODGE

Tudor Lodge

Prog Folk

4.00 | 60 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

To imagine being in a forest, hear the wind rustling through the trees and the sweet sound of the rushing water of a stream

The best quality of this fine album is its simplicity. There are no long and complex songs and arrangements are extremely simple. The songs are pleasant, some even excellent and free of acid-psychedelic experiments typical of other groups of folk-prog (Comus, Strawbs, Jan Dukes De Grey, Family).

The band's style recalls groups like Pentangle and Fairport Convention: it is a melodic and refined folk-rock. The music is characterized by the obvious predominance of acoustic guitars, but also for the important presence of the strings and winds (flute and horns in particular).

There are wonderful songs that on first listen I had not been impressed, but I enjoyed with time, such as It All Comes Back To Me (characterized by a wonderful introduction with strings and oboe) the contemplative Nobody's Listening and the funny Would You Believe?.

In Two Steps Back the voice of Ann Steuart is reminiscent of Annie Haslam, in fact this beautiful song could easily be a piece of Renaissance. Another highlight is Willow Tree the song closest to the canons of prog rock (in particular Strawbs comes to mind) because of the strange introduction, perhaps the only time of experimentation present throughout the album.

The last three songs are probably the least successful. The Lady's Changing Home is perhaps a timid attempt to make a commercial hit; it has the only electric guitar solo of the record, and a more determined work on drums. Madeline is an instrumental acoustic song with some exotic appeal. Kew Gardens is a cover of the song by Ralph Mc Tell with interesting vocal harmonies but little else.

Of course if you love the virtuosity of jazz-rock, the solemn tones and bombastic keyboards arrangements typical of symphonic progressive, you'll probably enjoy this album only in part. But if you love the folk music of artists such as Magna Carta, Anthony Phillips or Strawbs, this album certainly will keep you good company.

Finally, my intentionally stupid (and provocative) little game of "the best song of the album". It is very easy for me to identify here the less successful songs, but in this case it is very difficult to choose my favorite track since there are four or five songs all at the same level. Given that can be only one winner, I will choose at random!

Keep on proggin'.

Final rating: 7/10.

Best song: It All Comes Back To Me

Dark Nazgul | 4/5 | 2013-5-31

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