BLOMLJUD

So let's go review. First track sets the mood perfectly. Their Beach Boys like vocals, are nice introduction. They sets Mood. With capital M, because this Mood will grab you by your balls and don't let you down till last track will be over. Their voices are far more synchronized than line of SATA hard drives in RAID field, or than Octavarium orchestra (used in Score tour by Dream Theater in 2006). Than we get to first epic song. It's quite unusual to use more epic songs in one album, but they managed it. 13 minutes, it can be good epic. Well, it beats last epic too, by my opinion. To be honest, I have never heard such a melodic music. This is perfect example of optimistic music.

For example this Tale of Three and Tree is fine lullaby. Bluebells can seem more pop-oriented, but still stands its qualities. EDIT: And after few months of listening, I have admit that my feelings have changed a lot. I love it. /EDIT Moonwalk's "My Coat Is Full of Stars", yeah, it really is. Less positive, more dark I think, excuse me, I feel. Because to feel this is the key to understand this album. I think Blomljud is absolute opposite to Trout Mask Replica. This album has few purposes. Amongst them is desire to be optimistic, positive in general, to have nice melodies, cute (this is the first time I used this word ever) lyrics and nature-celebrating feeling. These Sweden boys, bards of modern prog music, who sings in English language really deserves people attention. This positive review (for positive music) doesn't mean that it's flawless. I found few things which irritates me. For example "The Ghost of Flowers Past", or few biblical themes, lines and remarks (I hate religion, god, all these things), but they can be found not only here, but also in Genesis work (yeah, book Genesis) or Church of Your Heart by The Flower Kings (at least I think it has some transcendent themes. Anyway, The Ghost makes me feel bad, so I always skip it.

Then country-like Yasgur's Farm. Why country ? Except it's farm and has countryside lyrics, you can hear country music played on electric guitar at 4:22 and in general, it's recurring theme in this piece. Solos are great here, even better than in other songs. It's funny (and pointless in fact) to compare it with old prog rock from 70s. Length of this CD is around 100 minutes and SEBtP has only about 40min. But Genesis piece is better. I can't say why, but most of people feel it this way. Why ? Who knows. Well, let's stab this review in the back and finish this non-Finnish (but Swedish) fine band finally (puns intended). Because you "cannot trust the tree". No, you can't, but trust me when I say, this is one of the biggest surprises of two thousand eight. Like pearl, found on the bottom of ocean, I've discovered this album forgotten by most people and I'm glad that I did. And now come the one, who made epic win. Even the first minutes of "Other Half of the Sky" are perfect, there is something even better. If it's possible, lyrics, but mostly melody at ... 8:00 (?) is ... is precious. And even this moment of great melody lasts only for three minutes and then came "TV is my only friend", it returns back later in this song.

So warning, this album is VERY addictive. But I don't care now, some addictions are good.Heroin is not, Blomljud is good. Coffee is bad, Other Half of the Sky is good. I can't imagine being without this music for long time. Hell yeah, this is the same case as I had with Dark Side of the Moon in days(I mean weeks) I listened it for the first time. Take care and do yourself a favour, listen to these guys and feel the heat of optimistic energy.

Some additionally info. Heh, there is interesting fact about this album. You can see, that at the moment (28th March, 2009), average points are 4.0 and there are four reviews by prog mods/revs. Their average is 3.6, so this 4.0 total must have came from us, mere mortals. I mean reviewers. It's probably sign that we're not to strict and professional. For example myself, I'm going to give this album five stars. As I did with Pink Floyd's best work. Can they be compared ? Absolutely no, my mind is not working in this way. They both deserves five stars by my opinion, but their different. A lot. A very very lot I mean, but both good. So this is my introduction. By the way, ebay albums according to name of this band are absolutely wrong. They are all albums "Moon Safari" from trance band "Air" (or something like that) which has nothing in common. Sad bud true. But I don't care, I don't use this feature (but it takes hell long time to load all things on page, mostly this ebay takes a lot of it).

EDIT: So 5(+) for absolute masterpiece. Only reason I see why somebody can hate this album is overuse of optimism thing. And can we blame them for that ? In current pessimistic world, why don't we just accept this. We like death metal, doom visions, world in flames, but a lot of people can't take these visions of peace, happiness and joy. I can. And I'm not some drug addict, I live normal life, study on university, live in (our country's society) quite big city, which is mostly made from grey colour, grey people and traffic rush. I'm realist. But I like these signs of better world.