STARDUST WE ARE

The fact that the Flower Kings' rhythm section sounds just like Yes's (especially their bass player), Roine Stolt tries to play guitar solos just like Zappa's, and Tomas Bodin does his best to produce convincing replicas of Tony Banks keyboard solos - noe these things bother me, on the contrary, I'm glad some musicians have returned to the idiom of classic symphonic prog.

What really annoys me, though, is Stolt's pedestrian lyrics: the man's obviously unashamed of piling cliché upon cliché upon cliché (with a few awkward borrowings from Beatles or Jimi Hendrix classics chucked in for good measure), and enunciates every single word as if it's heartfelt gospel truth.

On STARDUST WE ARE, however, virtually all of the music is so catchy, and the twenty-five minute epic is so full of wonderful ideas that the band's defects really do not matter. The Flower Kings are notorious for producing double albums with too much filler material. STARDUST WE ARE, I feel, is a triumph. It contains relatively few weak moments, and the title track almost takes you to that same special place Yes found on 'Close to the Edge' and Genesis on 'Supper's Ready'. It's a spectacular achievement - truly ecstatic symphonic prog. Oh, you may need a little 'suspension of disbelief'; after all it's hard to feel ecstatic about lyrics such as: 'Driving down the Memory Lane / Dusty dreams from a fading sun / Remember how the horses run' (etc.) But the music may just about take you there.

The only thing I really don't like about this album is its spectacularly hideous cover.