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Moon Safari - Blomljud CD (album) cover

BLOMLJUD

Moon Safari

 

Symphonic Prog

4.18 | 565 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

progrules
Prog Reviewer
3 stars I have been waiting to do this review for a while because I was puzzled about it. The first time I heard it I was quite enthusiastic about the sound and the whole 104 minute release. But when I listened the second and third time the entusiasm slipped away from me, not completely but more than I had expected.

At first listening this was almost overwhelming in the sense of the close harmony singing I never heard before in prog. The vocals are crystal clear and do an outstanding job together. I think it's fair to say that Moon Safari produce some of the best vocal performances in the entire prog scene. As we all know many prog bands do not really excel in the vocal department or have at least out of the ordinary leadsingers (Jon Anderson, Geddy Lee, Peter Gabriel, Peter Hammill, Andy Tilison, Roine Stolt, need I go on ?) but Moon Safari finally is an obvious exception. Also the instrumental handling is very much ok to me (even though it seems of second importance with this band) so what's the problem ?

The problem is the lack of energy they produce, the true heart & soul involvement is what I'm missing. I mean, they are compared with The Flower Kings but in my conviction TFK do a much better job in that department. And right now I'm listening to The Tangent, well, I have to say Moon Safari could take some lessons with these guys about playing with heart & soul. Moon Safari is almost the counterpart of The Tangent in this respect. Maybe Moon Safari isn't meant to be a band like this, maybe they just want to do their great vocal job and make pleasant sounding music but if that is the case they will never be my favourite band. It's the same problem as with Renaissance, technically great (especially Annie Haslam) but lacking emotion. Besides that the whole thing is a bit too mellow for me. If I stay with the TFK comparison I believe that TFK has much more body in their music, they can even be pretty fierce at times but the only moments I hear Moon Safari do this is in their epic after 5 minutes, lasting hardly two minutes in total and later on in the second half of this lengthy track. It will be no coincidence or surprise that this long epic is by far the best on the doubler to me. The rest is, well let's keep it friendly, not my cup of tea.

I will give it three stars (3,3) but that's partly because I know it's a good album, maybe even very good and I will always be at least a bit objective but in the end it's the personal appreciation that does the job for the rating.

progrules | 3/5 |

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