THE NOON HOUR

Although I Can't Define It

Here's a masterful demonstration of a winning amalgam of fine musicianship, cunning compositions, intelligent and oblique lyrics, arduous arrangements, challenging ideas, and ferocious performances.

Where on EARTH Do Sounds Like This Originate?

I think in the psyche, the soul, the collective unconscious. NATIONAL DIET- which is a RAINBOW FACE variant with mastermind multi-instrumentalist Jake Rose and drummer/percussionist Conor Reilly- plus a plethora of other bass guitar and woodwind and brass-wielding musicians, develop a gritty, spiritual, intense album to consider, then to reconsider, and then repeat.

Six Tracks

Jake and Co. throw everything plus a few more textures into these tracks. We hear dark, stark guitar/bass patterns, jangling mid-range guitar sounds, eerie synths, symphonic touches, controlled (barely) chaos at times, hallucinatory passages that build from wistful dreaminess to nightmarish flourishes- and that's in the first verse! (Not quite, but sort of).

And in contrast with the RAINBOW FACE album "Stars' Blood", vocals are clean not growled- definitely my personal preference- and utilized to convey some provocative ideas in haunting, dreamy, straightforward, and sometimes choral touches.

Whereas in "Stars' Blood" I thought things were at heart often simplistic- albeit with sophisticated flourishes- on "The Noon Hour" such ideas as the universality and presence of spirit, the core things of the eternal life-cycle, and the inter- connections of all things, are coupled with graceful, ferocious, inventive, passionate arrangements.

Completed in the Final Massive Close

With "Addled Dreams of Youth" NATIONAL DIET pulls out all the stops- beginning with solemn bass/drums, jangling guitars, dreamy vocals, evolving into a psychedelic fog of miasmic sounds with driving drumming and swelling keyboards, controlled chaos, shifting yet again into heavier dramatic guitars and punchy bass.

We hear haunting violin-style guitar and theremin lines with chaotic licks developing, growing in hard-driving fashion...then winding down with devolving descending synth wails...and ends.

Why Progressive Rock?

This is why!

My Rating: Four flashing stars.

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