VARIATIONS ON A DREAM

Pineapple Thief is one of the bands I discovered on the Progarchives, and I will admit I bought this album largely because I was curious what a band with such a name would sound like. Maybe it’s just that I’m not too attracted to melancholy sadness these days, but I can’t say this album has grown on me in the few months I’ve owned it. Maybe it’s just a reflection of the times – there’s so much sadness in the world that we can’t escape, I find myself reluctant to voluntarily subject myself to any that I don’t have to.

“We Subside” confirms that all the comparisons to Billy Corgan are valid. This could easily have been slipped onto a Smashing Pumpkins album and only the most ardent fans would know the difference. Same goes for “This Will Remain Unspoken”, which is pretty much the same song, only shorter.

Part of the problem with this next song is that it’s gives the appearance of something special at more than eight minutes and an appropriately spacey title. But a really good progressive or experimental rock song would distinguish itself with either a variety of tempo changes, extended instrumental or solo passages, a complex theme, even a spoken-word poem – something, anything to shape its character and provide some contrast and intrigue. “Vapour Trails” delivers an interesting rhythm and beat, some decent and varied keyboards, but not much more. The twenty second or so riffs are pretty much just repeated a dozen times or so until the group seems to tire of them. A good piece of work, but doesn’t rise to the level of truly impressive.

“Run me Through” takes about a minute to get started, preceded by an almost imperceptible synth sequence before finally erupting (sort of) in a nice lush blur of guitar and acoustic bass. Once again Soord’s vocals are straight out of the mid 90s, largely Corganesque but also not unlike R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe during the same era. I like the interplay of the guitar and organ here, although it does border dangerously on post- disco dance music at times.

“The Bitter Pill” on the other hand, is quite impressive with a tense piano lead-in that could have been theme music for a Friday the 13th movie, and ballad-like vocals that create an appealing mood for casual listening. Unfortunately the mood becomes too casual, as I can’t be bothered to read the lyrics and find out what the point to the tune is. Very relaxing in any case.

The instrumental “Resident Alien” is another horror movie soundtrack candidate, not quite scare-the-crap-out-of-you creepy, more like for the ending where the camera pans out to show the scattered corpses in the backwoods campground at twilight. This is largely sequenced and otherwise synthetic music, but good enough to hold a somber mood for a few minutes.

It seems like this album gets more mellow the longer it goes on. “Sooner or Later” has a tense guitar riff that threatens to explode at any moment and sort of does, but only briefly and not too convincingly. I guess this is a breakup song, and Soord projects enough angst to get his point across, but there’s nothing particularly innovative or memorable to hold the listener’s attention.

“Part Zero” starts off mellow like “The Bitter Pill”, but in this case the lead-in is done with acoustic guitar and some dreamy keyboards. I’ve read about the Pink Floyd comparisons, but I’d say they end with the band’s penchant for interminably lengthy keyboard mood music and depressing lyrics. This one has seems to go on forever, broken up with a few short guitar and rhythm crescendos that sound like Opeth but without conviction. Another not-exactly love song, this one about writing love songs. The guitars here are the best on the album, but could have benefited with a bit more aspiration on drums.

“Keep Dreaming” includes some rather creative Mellotron and piano keyboards, while again keeping the melancholy mood going for a few more minutes. This song kind of typifies the album as whole – a decent sound but rather weak lyrics, and not really fully developed but simply repetitive.

“Remember Us” might be intended to be a mini-epic at sixteen minutes-plus, but it comes off sounding a bit more like a combination of an in-studio jam session and an out-takes mix, which it probably is. If this were a more established band with a better sense of story-telling they might have pulled this off, but overall I’m just left underwhelmed.

This is an okay album, probably even good if you don’t have too great of expectations about being inspired or moved to tears or anything. I’ll give the band the benefit of the doubt since this is my first foray into the world of the Pineapple Thief and give this three stars, while reserving the right to revisit this one after listening to more of their work some day. Probably not too soon though, as this isn’t a band that’s likely to move too high on my album wish-list. Three stars.

peace