NUMBER TEN

To be fair, it sits in a period where I've been hearing a lot of concept albums...Porcupine Tree's "The Incident", Phideaux's "Number Seven", The Decemberists "Hazards of Love", Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Night Castle". But I don't think that's what it is specifically about this album that makes it sound somewhat disjointed. The feeling I get from this album is one that I don't usually get when listening to prog rock, and that is of this being an album that is the sum of it's individual pieces, and no more.More than any album I have heard in a long time, this album sounds like a collection of songs.

Okay, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The songs on this album are alright. Ships is a catchy rocker, if not much more. Bloody Holiday! is a somewhat amusing song. Valentine's Night is probably the best song of the bunch, with a nice underlying layer holding the gentle song together, and my favorite vocals on the album. Another Lazy Sunday is another nice track.

None of these tracks are really so exciting that I would recommend them to anyone. Strangely, I found the longest 'epic' tracks to be rather uninteresting. They weren't particularly bad, but they weren't good enough to justify the length on the album. (On the other hand, A Road Less Travelled has a really awesome part with great strings, and if that whole song sounded that good, it would boost this albums rating by a decent amount).

Good enough to be a 3 star album, but I would say just barely.

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