THIS

This is another steady Hammill album, it has a mix of ballads and semi-rock tracks. It is enjoyable all the way through but still lacks the vigour and inspiration to make it much better then just, well, 'regular'.

Unrehearsed is a nice song that mixes Hammill's calm 90's side with an attempt at VDGG craziness. Stupid returns to the experiments from the 78-81 period. It's ok but pales in comparison to its obvious examples. Since the Kids is a first real high point and another example that Hammill was a lot more successful at writing soft ballads in the 90's then at his many dreary attempts to 'rock' in that period. Also Nightman is a beautiful calm piece with an excellent interplay between acoustic guitar and violin.

The ambient closing track The Light Continent is a very sparse and quiet yet haunting piece. As I've pointed out in other reviews, this kind of music might really win over some David Sylvian fans. It's very similar to Sylvian's ambient music but here it's done by a much better vocalist (Oops, shouldn't have said that :)

With this album Hammill continued the growing quality curve that had set in with X My Heart. It will be of little interest to the majority of prog heads but this is one of Hammill's good 90's efforts that fans might want to pick up. 3.5 stars