NOT OF THIS WORLD

Ever since The World album - that was released exactly ten years before Not Of This World - Pendragon have followed the same musical formula. When comparing the four albums that the band produced over these ten years (The World, The Window Of Life, The Masquerade Overture and the present one), it strikes me is how similar these albums are both in terms of style and quality. Still, it should be argued that the three previous albums were all better than their immediate predecessor and that The Masquerade Overture thus was the peak of this period in the band's career. In that sense, I would say that Not Of This World is more similar to The World and The Window Of Life in quality than to The Masquerade Overture, but all of these albums have approximately the very same typical Pendragon sound. The basis of this sound is Nick Barrett's distinctive vocals and guitar play plus the keyboards of the great Clive Nolan.

It took the band five years to come up with this album and it is clear that they worked hard on it. The production values are extremely high and the whole album is impressively sonically perfect. The compositions all have the same sound and they are mostly quite long. The standout for me is A Man With Nomadic Traits - possibly my favourite Pendragon song after Paintbox - but it is actually not very easy to distinguish between the different songs on this album as they are all quite similar and use some common musical themes. The album is best viewed as a whole.

Not Of This World is surely a good album, but it is not the best place to start. I would recommend the two albums that surround it first; The Masquerade Overture and (my personal favourite Pendragon album) Believe.

Share this PENDRAGON review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to SouthSideoftheSky
• Report this review (#228517)
• Buy PENDRAGON music online with PA partners
• Show all PENDRAGON MP3/Stream
• Go to PENDRAGON page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Not of This World page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for PENDRAGON related discussions