THE LONG DIVISION

When I heard from band leader Robert James Pashman asking me if I would be willing to review their new album I just thought that here was another new band just starting out. What I hadn't realized was that here was an outfit with a history stretching back from more than twenty years and while this may have been their first album for more than three years it was actually their fourth. So I downloaded the album and put into 'The List' (yes there is such a thing, it is the way that I try and keep track of what I should be listening to so that I know just how far behind I am on the reviewing front). Somehow I am never really ahead of the game..

So, in due course I put on the album and then proceeded to sit there with my mouth open, and my ears more so. Where on earth have these guys been hiding and why didn't I know about them before? To me this is the first band I have come across who understand what City Boy were about in the late Seventies (sometime around 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire') and have then added in huge influences from 10CC and The Alan Parsons Project to produce an album that in many ways is sheer perfection. If you want your music to be complex yet simple, to be able to wash over you like a warm blanket yet still have soul and vigour then this is it. This album became a review blocker in the sense that when I had played it enough times to be able to write about it and move to the next one that just didn't happen as I was enjoying it too much.

I know that this album would have been in my top 10 for 2012 if I had been aware of it, but here I am in 2013 so that can't happen. Bugger. Melody, passion, hooks to die for, this prog/melodic rock album is essential. 'Nuff said. www.3rdegreeonline.com