BLINK OF AN EYE

Enchant's sixth album, Blink of an Eye, comes amidst a time of changes for the band. For their first five albums, their lineup had been fairly stable; bassist Ed Platt had, for reasons I've not been able to track down, not been involved in the recording of Break, but he was back in the fold for Juggling 9 and Dropping 10 - at which point longstanding keyboardist Michael Geimer departed, followed by drummer Paul Craddick a while after that.

This release would see Sean Flanegan take over at the drumstool, but the band did not yet have a permanent replacement keyboardist; Douglas Ott filled the gap for the time being, with guest Phil Bennett stopping by to add a few extra touches here and there. (Subsequent to this release, Bill Jenkins would join to take up the keyboard post long-term.)

Of course, musicians join and leave bands all the time - it's par for the course. However, as well as being their original drummer Craddick was also one of Enchant's key songwriters, making extensive contributions to all their prior albums on that front. In fact, he'd get at least a co-writing credit on the majority of the songs on more or less every previous album except Break (where he still wrote music for four of the ten songs).

As such, losing him didn't just mean losing a drummer - it also meant the band lost a key creative mind, and whilst Flanegan seems entirely competent behind the drumstool, he doesn't step in to fill the songwriting gap here. (He wouldn't get credited with any songwriting on the followup, Tug of War, either, but would get cowriting credits on four songs on the reunion album The Great Divide.)

I don't say this as a slam on Flanegan - if you're the new guy coming into a band which has just lost a couple of long- standing measures it can be sensible to hang back a little and get a sense of the group's internal chemistry before you start pushing your own ideas. However, the upshot of Craddick leaving is that only Douglas Ott and Ted Leonard get any songwriting credits on this album, making it the Enchant album with the least number of distinct individuals contributing to the songwriting. (The songwriting pool would widen again with Tug of War.)

That might explain some of Blink of an Eye's issues. In some cases, narrowing down the range of people contributing to songs can be a smart move; it can help to focus your sound and hone in on a distinct creative vision, rather than sprawling to try and accommodate everyone's ideas. In other situations, however, losing someone from a songwriting team is a net negative: what you might gain in some respects you ultimately lose through the simple fact that you have one less person throwing ideas into the pot.

In Enchant's case, I would say the latter situation applies. Enchant's sound prior to this was based on a smorgasboard of influences - neo-prog like Marillion, IQ, and Jadis, prog metal and heavy prog like Dream Theater or Rush, and from Break onwards an increasing influence from melodic alt-rock. That's at least two distinct flavours of prog, plus influences from outside of prog, all representing distinct strands in their music; you can see how it would be a challenge to come up with musical ideas which cover all those bases at once.

By comparison, to my ears the sound of Blink of an Eye feels like it's just a little bit blander than usual. Little musical development over Juggling 9 Or Dropping 10 is evident, and for a band which had made an admirable show of significantly developing and shifting its music from album to album that's unfortunate. To the extent there is a change, everything sounds a little bit more same-y than it did before - which is not a positive development -and it feels like the Rush influence that had cropped up frequently has been dialled back a lot. (If Craddick was responsible for a lot of the Rush-isms, that might be why - he'd hardly be the first drummer to look up to Neal Peart, after all...)

Don't get me wrong, this isn't flat-out horrible - you don't put it on and think that Enchant have suddenly lost all ability to play their instruments. It's nice, entertaining melodic rock with heavy touches here and there and some prog sensibilities... but it's one of those albums where I can sit here and listen to the entire thing start to finish, and when the final track ends I cannot remember a single goddamn part of it. It's pleasant enough in the moment, but there's nothing here which'd stay with you, and as such it feels like a comparatively lukewarm effort by Enchant's standards.