THE GOLDFISH

Someone should tell BERNARD OUELLET that he missed a release in 2014, given that the other 3 from his project KAOS MOON were issued in 1994, 2004, and now 2024. With "The Goldfish", he has gathered only 2 accompanying musicians in contrast to the more audacious productions, the superb "After the Storm" and the less exciting "Circle of Madness", but the signature sound remains a fittingly chaotic yet partially accessible crossover with just a smidgen of the RIO in between the lines.

This is something of a frustrating listen as the "wow" factor is scattered about frugally amongst all tracks, making it hard to pick favorites. In addition, organ is a bit too prevalent and samey sounding. Ouellette would do well to repeat a theme now and then to ram home a point but is instead hell bent on the opposite artifice. Still, his voice hasn't slipped much in 30 years and the vocals and lyrics reveal a facility with English that excuse any political shots from the bow related to his refusal to write and sing in his native French.

The most generally appealing numbers are the at times folky "Loggers Tale" and the epic title cut, but, as I implied above, you might just as easily choose a non intersecting list. This is what makes "The Goldfish" swim in circles a bit too often in between adventurous explorations. Good enough. See you in 30 years according to the mathematical sequence to date.

With the debut release in 1994, and the second in 2004, there has been a larger gap than normal to the third but multi-instrumentalist/singer Bernard Ouellette has now returned with new guitarist Eric Bonnette and new bassist Eric Portelance. The result is an album which is both interesting and somewhat confusing in that the vocal melodies are quite commercial and certainly fit well within the crossover progressive rock sub-genre, but the keyboard sounds are quite dated and chunky and often feel they have far more in common with classic RPI. He is also quite content to have passages where the two Eric's are not playing at all, which is a shame as the bass is remarkably fluid and driving, while the different guitar sounds utilised are interesting and when the guys decide to rock it then certainly do, coming across as a polished Deep Purple or Uriah Heep but with rather more interesting time signatures.

The result is something which is interesting, but is not nearly as compelling as one might think given this band has been around for so long, but there again the last album was Bernard and session musicians and one cannot help but wonder if that is the same this time given he also produced it. One gets the impression there is a good album here to be heard, but it needs to be somewhat expanded and if there had been a wider use of keyboard sounds instead of so much organ that might have done the trick, while if Bonnette had been given the opportunity to take more of a lead role that may also have helped, but for the most part this is quite one-dimensional and not as essential as one may expect.