THE WAKE

I.Q.'s second effort distinguishes it from the first almost immediately with brighter, more professional sounding production quality. A stronger work compositionally shows the band increasing in confidence. Song by Song:

Outer Limits: slowly builds the instruments together, really great vintage keyboard sounds here from Martin Orford. The rhythm section drives a tight and slightly complex beat forward. Peter Nicholls with his trademark eeriely high voice and obtuse yet evocative lyrics, but Orford is the absolute star of this song, organ, synth, mellotron, harpsichord, this has literally all of the classic sounds you can imagine.

The Wake: Crashing in with more vintage mellotron "voice" sounds and bass pedals, with Hackett esque guitar tones, these guys are literally inviting the Genesis comparisons. In this case, it manages to still sound like it's own thing, but the comparison is hard to avoid. A nice short rock piece with a good soaring guitar solo.

The Magic Roundabout: The vintage keyboard sounds continue to dominate their sound almost completely, mellotron and synth combining for a mysterious sounding intro before the main driving tune kicks in, again great driving drums and bass. Guitar takes a more prominent role, and the bass has lovely licks in this intro section. Middle section is slower with inspired and lovely melodies, with a more minor key and shifting ending section.

Corners: A very poppy beat opens this one up, this is an odd duck. A lyrical keyboard melody and sitar playing, but it's sort of a ballad? If Nicholl's vocal melody didn't have those classical inflections in it, you might mistake this for another genre. Not bad, just sort of odd. Ends with a very long fade out sitar solo.

Widow's Peak: VERY hard not to hear one the many eerie guitar passages from Camel's The Snow Goose in the opening guitar part here. The flute only adds to that sensation. The eerie tone shifts to brighter just before the mellotron and voice pedals kick in. Very, very Genesis-y melody here. The guitar evokes Hackett so much, I can't stop comparing but it still sounds great, so it's hard to ding them for it. Lots of great shifts and interplay here, really strong stuff.

The Thousand Days: A solid mid tempo rock song, good melodies but somewhat unremarkable. Nice eerie keyboard outro.

Headlong: Another great mix of melody, time signatures, keyboards and guitars. More of the same, which in this case is a good thing.

Overall, this is 4 stars, an excellent addition. The sounds may be derivative but the application of them to the songwriting elevates that copying. Peter Nicholls would depart after this album, and I'll admit the next two without him I haven't listened to yet, but am interested to hear if they deserve the lower rating they tend to get, especially since Orford, clearly the band leader here, is still with the group for those two.