PAINT A PICTURE

Fantasy's Paint a Picture is an album you will enjoy at first listening. Very song-oriented melodic prog rock with decent keyboard arrangements (mostly mellotron and hammond), decent guitar work, good texture and very good vocals. The main problem with this album is that it won't grow on you beyond that, no matter how many times you'll listen to it. Partly this is because of Fantasy's plain songwriting which if on the one hand creates very listenable songs, on the other hand it takes away depth from their music. Partly, this is because of the general lack of originality in Fantasy's music (especially considering this is a 1973 album).

Overall, this is still a good album, and I very much enjoy listening to songs such as Paint a picture (average song driven by vocal harmonies over a texture of acoustic guitar and Hammond), Circus (beautifully played all through, with well crafted dynamics, a decent guitar solo about 2mins into the song and great vocals), Politely Insane (Fantasy almost turning hard prog with this little uptempo gem), or The Widow (short sad song with acoustic guitar, cello and piano forming a nice background for the vocals melody). The second half of the album is much more ordinary than the first half, and at parts it gets quite boring (e.g., Thank Christ, Gnome Song).

3 stars, well deserved.