OCTOBERON

Ew, guys, no. Barclay James Harvest's Octoberon sees the band moving to counterbalance the soft rock influences that had crept into their sound by amping up the orchestral content of their music, but this is applied tastelessly and occasionally simply to provide filler. Too often the band are entirely overwhelmed and you're just left with the orchestra noodling away prettily but aimlessly, as though they are performing the into for a song which never quite starts. There's indications of rifts opening up within the band too, with the different songwriters' contributions not really coming together to form a cohesive aesthetic whole - Polk Street Rag, for instance, really doesn't fit the rest of the album, or the band's direction in general. Tasteless bilge.