HOME + NEW YORK SUITE

Magenta's Home started life as a double concept album, but hoping to reach a broader audience the murky prog morass of the midsection (the New York Suite) was trimmed from the running order and released as a separate EP; later, a special edition would include it as a second CD, and most recently the album has been rereleased with the New York Suite tracks restored to their original intended position in the running order.

Sadly, none of the configurations of Home - with or without the New York Suite in place (I have both so I've been able to experiment) manage to meet the expectations established by the magnificent Seven. Without the New York Suite, the balance of the album is a bit skewed towards contemplated piano-plus-vocals pieces which become samey and tiresome over the course of the album; with the Suite in place, the album feels bloated and fails to sustain my interest.

In short, I think trimming back the material was the right idea, but the band went the wrong way about it - rather than selecting the proggiest part of the piece and excising it, they should have trimmed back the filler over the course of the entire album and produced a single-album concept with each of the different sections (pre-New York, New York itself, and post-New York) condensed down to a point where it's all killer and no filler. That would require substantially more work than just removing some songs - actual existing songs would need to be modified - but I think the results would have been much more satisfying than either the castrated short version or the overstuffed "director's cut" of the album are.