MIRRORS

Well will start by saying I recently acquired the BOC box set and its introduced me to old and later recording I was not familiar with. Having grown up listening to Spectres, Fire of Unknown Origin, Revolution By Night etc some of the older earlier recordings didnt move me and being a victim of 80s rock I tend to lean to a more polished sound. That out of the way I do not think Mirrors is their worst outing regardless of Sandy Pearlman not being involved its still worthy of the BOC catalog for 2 tracks In Thee and The Vigil which are strong both compositionally and musicianship wise. The engineering is cleaner, the stereo field is being used a bit more and I like the fact the keyboards come thru a little more in the mixes(I am impartial to keyboards hence the bias). Like all BOC I find there are tracks that are weaker than others and its rare I find ANY BOC albums consistent in the overall atmosphere and musical feel. I am not a fan of that pseudo 60s sound that they sometimes draw into there music and tend to feel they should stick to the hard rock with prog influences more than submitting themselves to "that" 60s sound. The funky clavinet line in Lonely Tears is actually refreshing regardless of the Stevie Wonder comparison. Overall this album is "different" and has some very nice tracks at least half of them are decent. Different isnt always indication of bad music after-all a band must take chances and stretching their sound albeit might not bring them a hit single but for some of us it shows the creative elasticity from within.