BRICOLAGE

If I had known better (for example if anyone had written a review here) about this cd+dvd release by an American band totally unfamiliar to me, I probably wouldn't have bought it secondhand in the first place. I did listen to a couple of songs from youtube when trying to decide whether to order it or not, and was perplexed by their pop nature without any notable sign of prog, even though this band is categorized here as RIO/Avant-Prog (which they must have been in their original era in the 70's). I didn't have much of any interest to those two half-listened songs, but still I decided to buy the release with a beautiful cover art and a dvd as an extra bait.

This music was recorded mostly between '90 - '04, concerning also various particles within the songs themselves. This I learned from the dvd's textual contents (including lyrics as well). There are three female lead vocalists -- not counting Lisa Griffee who sings just one song -- appearing in turns on the set, Grace Hearn appearing the most frequently. They are not very distinctive compared to each other; a bit too sharp voices for my taste. The band's leader Jay Graboski plays guitar and David Reeve is mainly a drummer. All the other performers are named only in the dvd, song by song.

After listening to the set entirely, I still find it extremely difficult to spot anything progressive, not to mention avantish, in the music. This is upbright pop-rock with female vocals. Not that kind of pop I would be keen on, rather something one hears on commercially oriented rock channels on radio. Alanis Morrissette, Heart and such. Hell, Fleetwood Mac featuring Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks is way more interesting to my ears. Some songs here are catchier than others, but none of them really impressed me. Instead they all more or less sound the same. For example, no emotional ballads to stick out from the outgoing whole. Pretty bad for a nearly 79-minute cd containing 20 songs, huh?

The twelve tracks on the dvd (all between 1987 and 1992) are visually poor. Some gig cuts are just bootleg quality, mostly blurred and dark. A few tracks are music videos, in theory, but mostly likewise visually poor if not downright thrashy.

So, this was a major disappointment. If you like this kind of pop-rock, this set is not actually bad and it suits well for casual background listening.

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