THE THOMAS TRACKS

I could not have agreed more with Poldo65´s remark about italian band The Watch. 5Bridges definitly does the same Gabriel-era Genesis impersonation as they do, except for the fact that they are much better songwriters and the music here is much more interesting than anything The Watch (or The Night Watch, as they werer known ion the beginning) has released so far. And this is only 5Bridges debut CD! I must thank my long time PA friend Progrules for introducing me to this dutch band. Ok, no originality here. But they do come up with some really strong stuff and their performances are stunning.

No, The Thomas Tracks is not perfect. It is maybe too long (almost 75 minutes of music). the production could be a lot better and unfortunatly it does not have any tracks that really stand out. However, it flows rather nicely and I can hear the whole album from start to finish without skipping a single track. As you may have guessed the intrumental parts have lots of Hackett-like guitar parts, vintage-sounding keyboards that remind me of... who else? Tony Banks, 12 string acoustics and the singer has some similarities (but not too much) of Gabriel. But it is obvious that while the Genesis influence is overwhelming, they actually know how to write fine melodies and very good songs. I guess that soon they´ll be writing something more of their own, because it´s easy to see they are too good to be stuck in one mold forever, unless they wish to do so.

Conclusion: this CD is a pleasure to hear! I recommend to any symphonic prog lover, specially the ones who have a soft spot for early Genesis. 5Bridges is a very promising band. I´m looking forward to hear their next release (with a better production, hopefully). My rating here should be 3.5 stars, really, but they did their homework so finely I think it´s worth an extra half.