FIRE FORTELLINGER

With Wobbler on such a streak of high-quality releases, the prospect of a solo album from Lars Fredrik Frøislie, their keyboardist, is a tasty one indeed. As one might expect, it sounds somewhat Wobbler-ish, though perhaps with more influence from the more pastoral moments of Genesis, the gentler Italian prog bands, or fellow Scandi-prog stalwarts Änglagård, and substantially less influence from Yes.

The scaling back of the Yes influence is no surprise; Lars recorded this without Wobbler's Kristian Karl Hultgren on bass (who's one of the few players out there to really nail a style similar to Chris Squire's), and without the vocals of Andreas Wettergreen Strømman Prestmo, which whilst not ripping off Jon Anderson are in the same sort of arena. Instead, Lars tackles all the vocals himself, opting to sing in Norwegian rather than English - perhaps wisely, because making song lyrics flow naturally in a language which isn't your first is no easy matter.

The music is also a bit more improvisational, being a little rawer - Lars taking the opportunity to offer his ideas pure, without the usual process of filtering and refinement and collaboration which goes into making any band member's individual concept a Wobbler tune. The end result is perhaps the best sort of solo album a member of an active band can make - something close enough to the band's stamping grounds to please existing fans, but different enough to be worth pursuing as a parallel project.