DARK ALBUM

Ah, The Dark Album. First of all, it should be said that hardcore proggers are wasting their time here. Wigwam's prog days were over by now (NN and TLGSAS were still prog-pop, though). But, as I've said before, to me good music is good music, so I'm not going to dismiss an album just because someone might think it's not prog enough. This is almost solely on the pop ("deep pop") side of things, but there's no denying Wigwam's gifts in creating extremely well-written pop music. Clearly a more balanced record than TLGSAS, Dark Album actually has very little flaws. Helsinki Nights goes into the same territory as International Disaster from their previous effort, a harmless, but still quite catchy tune. Slightly changing their direction here, the mood of the album is surprisingly dark (hence the name, probably), especially on tracks like The Item Is The Totem (one of the highlights here). I do not agree with Hugues about the description of the music, I do not hear any country influences here. Of course, Pembroke's writing style was always somewhat folk and country oriented (just listen to his solo album Flat Broke), but on here it's just one of the ingredients in a well-mixed soup. All in all, Dark Album is one of my dearest Wigwam albums, and they truly proved that they don't necessarily need Pohjola and Gustavson to make things work. Unfortunately, the band disbanded after making this album, and we would have to wait 16 years to hear something new from them.