ADAM & EVE

Well, would you Adam 'n' Eve it! It's another Flower Kings studio album, but this time the cover art seems rather different in style from what we're used to seeing from the group. Don't let that fool you, though: to a large extent this is Flower Kings business as usual... which is kind of the problem with this release.

You see, if you'd been listening to the Kings' career chronologically up to this point you've already had a LOT of Flower Kings business as usual to digest - not simply because of the number of albums they released, but because of the sheer length of those albums, with the band frequently stuffing CDs to their time limits or putting out double CD albums of comfortably more than 2 hours long. This is very well-trod ground, and this time around it's feeling like Stolt and crew are going through the motions.

Possibly this was deliberate. The Rainmaker, which I thought was excellent, took a somewhat more moody and subdued atmosphere than we're used to hearing from the band and presented that in conjunction with an approach which still hit on some interesting sounds but didn't seem to be going out of its way to cram as many different ideas into the pot as possible (which earlier Kings releases had tended to). They followed that up with Unfold the Future, which was a return to a more traditional format for them but ended up going somewhat deeper than usual into their jazz fusion flirtations - that was less to my taste, but at least with the latter aspect something new was being tried, though to my ears away from the jazzier sections it seemed to be Flower Kings-by-numbers.

Still, perhaps even this departure was too much for some fans. Adam and Even seems like a studied exercise in mostly presenting the least musically challenging parts of the band's musical palette. Oh sure, sure, Love Supreme and Driver's Seat are epic in length, but in terms of what's actually musically presented in that length you're largely looking at the Kings' well-worn brand of early Yes combined with the odd mild gospel influence. It's all competently done, but where's the humour, where's the sense of surprise, where's the band who'd add a good dose of Zappa to their retro-prog gumbo to give it some more spice?

A further issue is presented with the approach to vocals. The harmony vocals are fine - it's the lead vocals that are the issue. being more prominently featured and with the band doing more bits where multiple lead vocalists each have bits on a song, which often ends up feeling more jarring than effective. The best vocals here are from Pain of Salvation's Daniel Gildenlöw, but this is its own problem - they're just good enough that you're left wishing that they'd just let him do all the leads and have Hasse and Roine concentrate on the harmonies.

On the whole, Adam and Eve is a title which should really suggest new beginnings, but on here the Flower Kings largely deliver the same-old-same-old. To be fair, "more of the same" was probably fine if you'd been keeping up with the Flower Kings to this point, and it is somewhat interesting to hear a return of some of the Christian themes of the original The Flower King album (the Roine Stolt solo release that catalysed the foundation of the group). Still, the gang did a lot of the stuff they do here fresher and with more surprises and flair on their 1990s albums, so I wouldn't cite Adam and Eve as a place to start exploring their work. Three and a half stars.