ART & ILLUSION

The Andy Sears period of Twelfth Night is popularly seen as a time when the band sold out in order to angle for mainstream success. I prefer to see it as the band emphasising a different aspect of their sound than the one the Geoff Mann era focused on - if you listen to, say, Smiling at Grief you'll find a song or two in the poppy art rock vein they pursue here, it's just that on Fact and Fiction and Live at Last (the two best-known Mann-era releases) they leaned a bit more heavily on the neo-prog side of their sound.

And to be honest, the Art & Illusion mini-album - more of an EP, really - isn't that far removed from the sound of the Geoff Mann era. Hell, the title track is even a Mann-vintage track - you can hear him performing it on the Flashbacks archival release, and the 2CD "definitive edition" release of Live and Let Live. Sure, there's no dark epic here on the level of Creepshow or We Are Sane, but that wasn't their sole preserve even under Mann, and any of the tracks here sit naturally next to material like Fact and Fiction or Human Being.