CLEANING OUT THE CLOSET

This is an album made of left-overs from several studio sessions. I have already expressed my circumspected views on "left-overs" in several of my reviews. It is extremely rare to find some great songs which, by miracle, were forgotten.

Led Zep even tried to sell the idea that they had so good material left that they couldn't cope with the ifeeling that they would be lost for ever. And they released "Physical Graffiti". Their worse album IMO (and Led Zep do belong to my top ten preferred band) but which will sell like hell of course !

This one it is a "Christmas" album. And actually, when I listen to the opening track, it sounds almost like a Marillion one (Mark II era). Another band who released lots of these "Christmas" presents to their fan database (and there is nothing wrong with this, on the contrary).

Still, if you would except, the instrumental "Eve" which is a quiet instrumental song there won't be a lot of great moments here. "Raise The Knife" should have been seriously cut down to be fully interesting. Only the last section of this long song is catchy.

Some rock ballad "To Live Forever", Some heavy and uninspired stuff : "Where Are You Now" (of which again the second part is far much superior, more melodic and featuring some pleasant synthesizers). A bit of early U2 sounds ("I Will Follow") with "The Way It Used To Be". Not great but good. Like the pop / metal "Cover My eyes".

The sweet ballad "Speak To Me" is very dispensible.

This album is for die-hard fans only. But it was aslo released as such, so...

Demos? Yes... only for fans? Maybe the opposite...

We have here a collection of "B" sides, songs that didn't made it to find a place in the Images and Words, Awake and Falling into Infinity albums. Something special about it? Yes, many things, so lets see:

The first four songs have the great sound appealing of Kevin Moore, and the lyrics of "Don't Look Past Me" are from him and are quite good and touching, he was a great songwriter. The soft paced "Eve" is an instrumental track filled with a lot of emotion and sadness. The rest of the album is made of songs in which Derek Sherinian was involved. Most of them are some kind of prog-pop songs. Many of them have less busy melodies and the instruments are a lot more relaxed than what they use to show in the regular songs they compose.

It's evident that DT was passing for a time in which they really wanted to sound more radio friendly but all of the songs ended up feeling a little messy, too complex for a pop success, but too simple to be progressive, at least in the regular stuff DT made. This are demos so, of course the songs are not finally made, so, if those get to pass the test to be in an album, probably those should be reworked a little to be more consistent, but it's very interesting how DT guys can really make radio friendly songs without loosing the touch.

Highlights: Don't Look Past Me, Eve and The Way It used to Be. The rest are just good but average songs. I think this material is better to non-DT fans but regular alternative rock fans. Good stuff, not too complex but entertaining enough, and there's a lot of emotion on the songs. The sound quality is very good for been demos and shows very well the progress of the composition of DT. Three stars is quite accurate.

Pop Dream Theater

This truly is cleaning out the swampy closet of B-sides and demos for the overall quite mediocre album Falling Into Infinity and a few from before that. This album is essentially Portnoy taking all the songs the band did not see fit for an album (most are understandable) it compiling it into another release on his well known DT bootleg label YSTEjam Records. The majority of the disk is the forcibly popularly accessible tracks the producers of FII made the band write. For the most part, these tracks, such as Don't Look Past Me and others, are overall bad. They have cheesy melodies, lyrics, musicianship, and an overall pop/alt rock kind of feel. It's not the kind of Dream Theater that the average fan knows. To balance the cruddy pop music, however, Portnoy throws in two versions of the sublime "Lie" single B-Side, as well as the 11 minute "Raise the Knife," one of the few good FII demos. Overall, the compilation is really only for die hard fans who really need every piece of music the band has written (which is me).

The obvious poppyness of many of the tracks can get sort of irritating after numerous listens. I, a huge fan of the band, have to say that I am massively grateful the band never put these on an official studio album, because they would probably ruin my love for the band. They have that cheesy quality of pop rock radio music, not the type of stuff I want to be listening to in any frequency. Although some of the tracks, like To Live Forever, Raise the Knife, and partly Eve, have that nice Dream Theater quality, overall the CD is just not good. In the end, I can understand why Dream Theater would want to release their unreleased material, but I would have rather they kept some of the worse tracks for their private collections. 2- stars.