ETARLIS

Mermaid Kiss is a female lead English band. Yes, I know. England swarms over with female vocals lead English bands. But Mermaid Kiss is not quite like the other bands. First of all, they are far less commercial than most of the other bands. The Mermaid Kiss sound is much more organic, in fact. It is also more based on acoustic instruments. But they are not exactly a chamber prog aka Aranis either. There is plenty of electric instrumentations here. Neither is they are symphonic as the likes of Rennaissance either. The female vocals of Evelyn Downing is not particular operatic either. Evelyn Downing sings in a far more clean voice. I would almost brand her vocals as Irish in many ways.

My knowledge of other English female lead groups is very limited to say at least. I normally runs a mile when they arrive in my neighborhood........ away from them, that is. But Mermaid Kiss reminds me a lot about Mostly Autumn, Iona and a bit about Magenta. In the interview I did with them, Karnataka was also listed by the mainman as an obvious reference. It is not easy to pinpoint this band.

On this album, they are also all over the place with a lot of symphonic prog mixed with Keltic rock and some stuff I recognice from Kate Bush's Sensual World album too. And Kate Bush is a good reference too when it comes to this album. But as I said, finding a reference for this album is not easy. This album is very varied, style wise.

Most of the album is based on and wrapped around Evelyn Downing's excellent vocals. With an asset like her, no wonder. The other instrumentations is a careful, tasteful use of guitars, piano, synths, bass, drums, flute, woodwinds and some other acoustic instrument. Everything done with finesse and good taste. The songs are also long and there is a lot of things going on at the same time.

The quality is great throughout. A lack of a true killer track is my only gripe. But the songs are still great with A Sea Change and Nowhere To Hide as the two standout tracks on an album with no real bad tracks.

For me, Mermaid Kiss is a great discovery and so is this album. It is a truly great album which deserves to be discovered by many others too.

4 stars

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