A NOD AND A WINK

The opening track is basically a cheesy classic rock song with some proggy extensions such as pastoral flutes, a disrupted song structure, keyboard solos and other pointless instrumental sections thrown in for good measure. Most melodies are soulless and uninspired. This track simply tries too hard to be classic prog but it misses the sparkle to make that happen.

After the sub-standard cliché prog of the title track, Simple Pleasures is a real relief. The man hasn't lost it completely and can still write poignant rock songs with a subtle and tasteful arrangement and a warm soothing vocal.

With A Boy's Life we're all cosy and nice around the campfire listening to an old man's sentimentalism, a nice instrumental section follows that makes you hope for an interesting song development, but a good minute later we're back at the dreary folk sentimentalism where we started.

Fox Hill sounds like an attempt to create a Camel take on The Battle of Epping Forest . I suppose it's meant to be funny but it comes off pointless and uninteresting, even annoying at times. The Miller's Tale is another campfire moment but at least it succeeds in setting some kind of mood, despite the overtly romantic orchestral overtones.

Squigely Fair is another prime example of meaningless sympho, all meant to be too nice and smooth and charming but it sounds old, woolly and incredibly tame. This music has not only no soul and no edge, it's also musically uninteresting, nothing you haven't heard on countless other prog-folk albums. For Today is better but that is a relative thing here after all the limpness that preceded. At least there is an attempt at a guitar solo here.

I can imagine this album has some charm to symphonic fans but if I look at the symphonic classics, they all had more life and creative spark in one minute then this album has in its entire length. Basically this is a one star album to me but I guess Simple Pleasures absolves it. Avoid unless you want to hear every retro symphonic album available.

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