SIX

Mansuns second album was always going to be a tricky affair. How do follow up the success (artistic and commercial) of Attack of the Grey Lantern? It seems the record company thankfuly were still happy to let the 4 lads from Chester have their head.The result is certainly a more confident effort although I feel it lacks the prog credentials of their debut. No orchestral arrangements and the songs feel less connected. On the plus side the band are considerably tighter and are playing better than before. There is also a good consistency to the music overall with no tapering off of quality towards the end as seemed to be the with the debut.Thats a good achievement for an album with a running time of 70 minutes. Could I recommend this album to prog fans? Perhaps not as much as AOTGL but if you are looking for indie rock with a brain that packs a decent punch then this may just hit the spot.

Send comments to richardh (BETA) | Report this review (#266172) | Review Permalink
Posted Sunday, February 14, 2010

Mansun's Six is best experienced in its original, full-length track listing of 13 songs (or 14 if you have the Japanese-only bonus track); a castrated version of the album was issued in the US with only 11 tracks, but when a band dedicates itself this thoroughly to excess trying to hold back becomes counter-productive. This isn't the first time anyone tried to fuse British indie rock of the Britpop era with progressive rock - Marillion tried a somewhat similar experiment with Brave a few years earlier, though that leaned much more heavily on the prog side of the equation - but Mansun's Six deserves notice for the way it applies proggy song structures to songs performed more or less in a Britpop style, bar for the occasional technically complex bit and a few pretty keyboard flourishes.

The lyrical themes draw on various bits and pieces of pop culture - there's lots of Prisoner references, fourth Doctor Who Tom Baker reads a bit of poetry, in the last song you can hear the TARDIS dematerialising - but what's more interesting to me is how the band are able to put this all together into a cohesive musical trip. It took me a while to appreciate it and I'm not sure it's an unalloyed success, but it's a very worthwhile experiment which came up trumps - and was more or less ignored and forgotten about on release. Oh well.

Send comments to Warthur (BETA) | Report this review (#769212) | Review Permalink
Posted Monday, June 11, 2012

Note: This is a review of the European/Japanese release. If I recall, the American release of this album had a butchered tracklisting and the title track was completely different. No bueno, in my book. This is one of those albums that catches you off guard when you first hear it. To be completel ... (read more)

Report this review (#474055) | Posted by AgentSpork | Saturday, July 02, 2011 | Review Permanlink

One of the great over-looked gems of British prog. After being a little bit proggish on their also excellent debut Attack Of The Grey Lantern, Mansun went the full hog here with the incredibly complex and uncompromising Six. Do you like records that have been obsessively assembled with all so ... (read more)

Report this review (#305625) | Posted by Textbook | Tuesday, October 19, 2010 | Review Permanlink

How good is this album? Well, let me put it this way. I am a huge fan of and own all or most of the discographies of: Genesis, Gentle Giant, Kong Crimson, Transatlantic, Pink Floyd and a host of other progressive groups. Part one of Mansun's Six (that's the first 8 tracks - although they're ac ... (read more)

Report this review (#272359) | Posted by JonnyM79 | Tuesday, March 16, 2010 | Review Permanlink

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