THE LIGHT

It sounds to me that Spock's Beard had a ton of ambition going into making this record. But ambition alone a great record does not make, and THE LIGHT might be the prime example of that.

Spock's Beard sound relatively inexperienced here. And as the fans get their tomatoes ready, let me explain what I mean; if we use the big epic ''The Water'' as an example, it suffers from several pitfalls. While it looks like a multipart epic, I see it as nothing more than seven different ideas that have nothing to do with each other smooshed together by an obscure lyrical theme that I'll never be able to grasp. It jumps from marching piano to a Yes-like thing to boring padding to screaming rock to acoustic rock to subpar jazz fusion to ''The Great Gig in the Sky'' in its 23 minutes. Having a broad range of influences is fine, but I don't like eighty-one different styles all played in cliche mannerisms.

The pieces as a whole can get small lift-off from something I like, but get grounded by something that sounds ''out of place''. The title track jumps too many styles way too quickly and come and go in a manner which leaves me confused. There are even a few sections in songs like ''FU/I'm Sorry'' and the ''Senor Valasco'' thing that just don't serve any kind of purpose at all, and I'm readily confused as to why they exist. I find ''Go the Way You Go'' avoids the previous pitfalls I've already describe, but I find the ending to be so expected that I hate it, not to mention the whole piece sounds like Kansas on a creative dry spell with tinges of live Rush.

I think KINDNESS OF STRANGERS represents a Spock's Beard that is a bit more mature and more restrained. THE LIGHT sounds like Spock's Beard wanting to do too much to appease prog fans. This version of Spock's Beard doesn't work for me as the epics do nothing more than leave question marks over my head.

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