SPECTRAL MORNINGS

Steve Hackett

Eclectic Prog

4.15 | 967 ratings

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Bonnek
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator

Just like its predecessor, Spectral Mornings suffers from inadequate song writing. There is not one sung part here that doesn't make me cringe. Luckily, it is mainly instrumental.

Every Day starts with a 3 minute pop tune that tries hard to be as shabby and dated as anything on the previous album. Just when you might expect the worse, Hackett launches into a breathtaking guitar solo that would be copied infinitely by later neo-prog bands. The Virgin and The Gypsy is as woolly and stuffy as your granny's attic, still it has some vague charm, but compared to the Eastern instrumental The Red Flower it's colourless.

Clocks is a great dark instrumental piece, with a heavy moog sound and a great solo. After a bit of filler, Hackett goes all pastoral on Lost Time in Cordoba, very mellow, just acoustic guitar and flute basically. Hackett would create entire albums filled with similar pieces, which is a bit too much of it really. But here, it sits entirely at easy. Tigermoth adds more dramatic electric guitar soloing. It has a peculiar vocal track in the second half. Maybe that's just to make the contrast with the stellar album closer even greater. Spectral Mornings is guitar beauty like only Hackett and Latimer are able to produce. Breathtaking.

The strength of the prevailing instrumental music on this album make it too good to be just a 3 star, but there's no way around the AOR vocals.

Bonnek | 3/5 | 2010-1-16

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