TRIPTYCH

It happens to almost every band eventually. Their repertoire gets large enough that their new songs begin to sound derivative of their old songs. THE TEA PARTY have consciously worked to avoid this since the beginning of their career, but I'm afraid on this album they do not succeed.

'Triptych' is a reasonable album. Musically competent, full of excellent melodies. What it's missing, however, is heart. The songs sound like inferior copies of what's gone before. The #1 Canadian single, 'Heaven's Coming Down', is stripped back soft rock... dare I mention a band called NICKELBACK? This is an abrogation of what makes the band great. This song succeeds only because the passion has been torn out of it. Rock by numbers. MARTIN's great voice is wasted here - in fact, it sounds incongruous, more like TOM JONES than JIM MORRISON. Songs like 'Underground' and 'The Messenger' drift past on a cloud of their own inconsequence. Others ('Samsara', as you'd guess from the title, and 'Halcyon Days') reference the glorious 'The Edges of Twilight' but those days appear to have gone. There's nothing exotic here, nothing searing, nothing propulsive. It's telling that many of the songs fade out. As does the album.

Again I must emphasise that this is not a poor album. But I would genuinely choose to listen to 'Transmission' twice in a row than follow it with this one.