A FAR CRY FROM HOME

A bunch of good songs in a style very close to Mostly Autumn but less Gilmour influenced than Bryan Josh usually is. Heidi Widdop is a good vocalist with a pitch a little lower than Heather Findlay's. Her voice is powerful and if I have to compare her with another singer I think to Christine Booth of Magenta.

The guitar sounds more like Liam Davison than like Josh and they don't have the strong celtic- folk influence of the MA first albums. I think to have given an idea of how this band sounds, who likes Davison's side project "Breathing Space" will find this album very good.

Said so, I don't see much sense in going track by track. I just want to mention "My Lips Are Too Dry" which is really good and groovy and the melancholic "Tuscany Sun".

I think is Adam Dawson the man who sings on "Silver Skies". He sounds very similar to Bryan Josh. Without looking at the album cover picture I could think of a Mostly Autumn song, also for the nice flute which adds a touch of folk to this song.

In brief, this is a good album, well played and with good songs. Heidi's voice is very nice but they don't add much to what Mostly Autumn, Karnataka and Breathing Space have already done.

A nice non-essential listen.

3.5 stars, really. When I heard about this band formed by former Mostly Autumn singer Heidi Widdop I was instantly curious. I was never a real big fan of MA, but I do have some of their CDs and for a time I thought they wold become very big. Unfortunately internal struggles within the band and the constant line up changes prevented that. Stolen Earth´s debut caught me by surprise as being much less folk oriented than MA. In fact, their famous celtic elements are almost totally absent here. Of course the Pink Floyd influence is all around (in a good way) plus some more rockier moments helped a lot by Widdop´s bluesy voice. She is a very strong singer and the band is tight.

The songwriting in general is very good. All the songs are strong, although with nothing really new. As a debut album this is very promising for some of the tracks like Tuscany Sun and, specially, the nine minute PF drenched Perfect Wave are excellent examples of how far they can go as a band and as composers. Guitarist Adam Dawson takes the lead vocals on a couple of songs and although he is good his voice is very different from Bryan Josh and not so engaging, but that´s just my opinion. I guess it would be bad for the band to sound vocally too close to Mostly Autumn, and their vocals are quite dissimilar. The instrumental parts do remind of PF, with both Dawson and keyboards player John Sykes trying hard to emulate early Gilmour and Wright respectively (and most of the time they succeed). Not really too original but they do have the chops and talent to find their own styles very soon. The rhythm section on the other side is terrific already and make a difference. Production is top notch.

With no fillers to be found anywhere I found Far Cry From Home a very pleasant experience to listen to. I still have the feeling that their potential was not fully explored just as yet. So I´m really looking forward to hear their next works., But for now, if you like melodic rock with very strong Pink Floyd influences, then you can´t miss this one. Very promising band,