LOVE OVER FEAR

To heck with it I'm giving this 5 stars. I want to say PENDRAGON are back but they never really left did they? I sure get what the fuss is about this album now. That four album run from 1991's "The World" to 2001's "Not Of This World" was their high water mark in my opinion although the albums that followed like "Pure" and "Passion" were also excellent but I also feel like they were distancing themselves from Neo Prog by going in that heavier direction.

So Nick moved to the county of Cornwall home of hundred of beaches and living on the sea seems to have changed his life. I get it. I live in a tourist town where people come from all over the place but mostly from Toronto to get away to the longest freshwater beach in the World with the beautiful Blue Mountain in the west. It never gets old driving or walking down there, it's stunning. I could never afford to live on the beach but it would be life changing.

It's like PENDRAGON have re-embraced the old school Neo where it's all about the emotion of the vocals, lyrics, guitar and atmosphere. That's what I loved about this sub-genre but I also always felt there was so much crap in it as well and was never too surprised at the abuse back in the day. It's like "Love Over Fear" is the followup to "Not Of This World" but more modern and of course 20 years later.

You want emotion it's here in spades. That's the one thing I felt was lacking with IQ's "Resistance" although it was there. We get variety here and those sing-a-long choruses about love and the beach. There's a picture in the liner notes of Peter and Nick playing guitar on the beach as the sun sets. Love the guest violin on two tracks and Nick plays mandolin on one song plus there's guest sax on "Whirlwind". So cool to see names like Barrett, Gee, Nolan and Groom again. I'm not sure what happened to Fudge Smith their drummer who has been gone for years but we got a young guy doing that now.

This is consistent with a lot of high end tracks on it. I checked six of the ten as being lights out good. Voted as the fifth best on this site for 2020 is saying something too of course. Neo-Prog is apparently alive and well in the 20's and this will continue as long as we have PENDRAGON and IQ around.