THE PRODIGAL SON

Nektar was a band from the early seventies that produced two great psychedelic / space rock albums. They drastically shifted in their music style after this even if some good works were produced later on.

Their last album dated from 1980 and was one of their good efforts (even if not too many persons think so).

My point of you is that when such a band does a come back, its fan database waits for a real come-back. I mean like in the good old days. But over ninety per cent of the time it is not the case. Like here.

This is a soft-rock album with absolutely no highlights. Supermarket (or elevator, as you wish) music. Not too bad, that's true. But no early fans can really like this since there are no reference to their previous work and I wonder how many youngsters can be interested.

Nektar is still touring and I even thought to attend their concert next Friday (September 30th 2007) at the Spirit of 66 here in Belgium, but finally I won't go. What for ? None of the songs I like will probably come out from their instruments so I might just be wasting my time.

This is even more a pity that several founding members were present to record this release; they could at least have come up with something more interesting. Van Der Graaf did it in 2005 with "Present" (well, for half of it actually). Why couldn't "Nektar" do it ?

Still, I will review some more of their live efforts released much later than their original recording ("Sunday Night At The London Roundhouse" for example as well as their last studio album to date "Evolution". The album "Book Of Days" featured on PA might well never see the light since there are apparently major problems to release it. Hopefully that there will be soon a solution.

This also leads me to the (important in my view) point that there shouldn't be the possibility to review a record PRIOR its release, but I might post a thread on the forumabout it, if I have time.

Two stars for this middle of the road music.