SUBTERRANEA

Subterranea is an album which has grown on me over time. At first, I'd have given it a four star rating on the basis of the individual songs, but the more I listen to it the more I think the whole experience is greater than the sum of its parts. Whereas Ever refreshed and renewed the sound of The Wake, Subterranea brings the IQ sound all the way up to date; much like Marillion's run of masterpieces from Brave to This Strange Engine, the album finds the band expanding the boundaries of their sound.

Despite the double-disc concept album format and the inclusion of a 20 minute finale in the form of The Narrow Margin, there's something conspicuously absent from Subterranea, and that's the band attempting to sounding progger-than-prog as other bands might be inclined to attempt on a piece such as this. Where a proggy touch would be beneficial - as on epics like The Narrow Margin - they go for it, where an approach drawing from other contemporary music genres would work better, they plump for that instead. (One of my favourite examples of the latter is the gorgeous Capricorn, a mellow rock number with an achingly beautiful sax solo.)

All this good stuff is combined with a genuinely interesting and novel plot for a concept album, updating the legend of Kasper Hauser for the X-Files generation, and whilst each individual song might not be a prog masterpiece, they're never less than compelling listening, and taken together the emotional arc the album tracks proves irresistible. I don't listen to it as often as Ever or The Wake, but that's mainly because I need to set aside more time to listen to the thing all the way through than for those two; of late, I've come to believe it's just as good as them.