HÖSTBRIS

Here’s an album that starts off promising enough, with keyboardist Jan-Anders Warnqvist and guitarist Gert Nilsson laying down the lazy opening title track instrumental full of keyboard theme variations and some pretty decent low-slung guitar. The influences of Camel and, to a lesser extent Gentle Giant, are obvious and pervasive.

Like I said, a promising beginning but not the total picture of this band’s first and only proper studio release. The follow-on track “Ugglans Nattvisir” introduces vocalist Birgitta Nilsson, a slightly bouncier keyboard feel and a persistent and almost disco rhythm that belies the time in which the music was recorded (late seventies). In addition to bass Kenneth Halvarsson lays down some decent saxophone, but the band by now has revealed two sides to their sound that seem to compete for the rest of the album. Both sides are present in the three part “Suite”, and at times Warnquist seems to struggle to innovate on keyboards and resorts to repetitive passages that flirt with a progressive sound but sometimes come up just a bit short. This carries through to “Falsk Ouverture” which also seems to be a thought in search of completion; pleasant, but in the end not exactly awe-inspiring.

The band returns to their British prog-folk influences at times to good effect, most notably on “Finalen” and “Upa”, the latter which flirts just a bit with a mild jazzy and rather convincing ennui. But the vocal tracks fail to quite meet the challenge of what the rest of the band is trying to achieve instrumentally, and in the end this and the sometimes unwanted intrusion of contemporary rock rhythms take away from what could have been a better classically- leaning symphonic album.

I guess these guys rediscovered some lost material (including live tracks) and put out a compilation not too long ago. I’d like to hunt that one down and see how it compares to this studio release. As it stands this one merits a three star rating based on the better symphonic parts, but not more since the sometimes noodling repetition and rather weak vocals keep it from being anything more. Recommended to fans of Nordic symphonic and prog-folk rock of the seventies as well as those who prefer the laconic music of bands like Camel and Harmonium.

peace