DESOLATION ROSE

I am always willing to give new TFK releases a chance cuz I always have hope that these talented and dedicated musicians will finally hit gold. However, my relationship with TFK, historically, has been one of annoyance and disappointment. There have been moments-- even whole songs--of brilliance and total engagement for me, don't get me wrong, but, on the whole, TFK has yet to win me over. Desolation Rose harbors most of the same aggravations and disappointments for me: irritating vocals, awkward word/phrase choices in lyrics, cheezy, stolen, "cut-and-paste" riffs from all instruments as all songs are laid upon a foundation of simplistic formulae and sounds. While I appreciate the message being conveyed here--the recognition of the historical events, trends and persons contributing to Earth/humanity's current problems--it's almost too old and too late. I'd rather have ULVER's gloomy acceptance and more advanced grieving than this soulless anger. While I do admire the musical talents that make up TFK, I think they need to leave the comforts of their neo-prog glorification of past masters and do something different. A rock opera (like Motorpsycho--though "Silent Graveyards" is a start!) or an album with their music performed by or with classical instruments or a chamber orchestra (Anathema, Kotebel, Five- Storey Ensemble) or an all acoustic RIO/Avant album (Aranis, Univers Zero, Yugen) or a folk or medieval album (The Amazing, Fauns) or an album in which they all trade their instruments with each other during composition stage (Talking Heads Remain in Light) or an electro-pop/house album (Everything But The Girl, Massive Attack, Bark Psychosis) just something to get them out of this stale box of monotonous predictability.

Contrary to most other reviews of Desolation Rose that I've read, I like the long song here, "Tower One" (13:37) (9/10), best and I do not find myself enjoying any of the 'shorts' very much. This was the opposite of my reaction to TFK's last album in which I loved all the shorts and found myself quite annoyed by the 25-minute epic, "Numbers." As a matter of fact, "Tower One" is the only song on Desolation Rose that even comes close to earning a five star rating from me.

A 3.5 star album rated down for the inclusion of the second disc of 'demo' songs. (They should've saved those to work on one or more of my above suggested 'directional change' albums.)