BETWEEN SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW

Those poor Americans! It's generally acknowledged that the prog egg hatched in late 1960s England. While country specific offshoots sprouted in Italy and Germany, and the French and Scandinavian schools have enriched us with folk and metallic variants, what have the Americans ever done for us? Well, they brought us LOS JAIVAS...oops different Americans. How about RUSH...wait what? OK there was KANSAS and...HAPPY THE MAN, and probably something in between. In more recent years, if you liked new time religion, then the Morses might have been your thing, or if you had ADD then maybe ECHOLYN. There was and is IZZ as well, and I'm sure I"m forgetting somebody and would not be disappointed to know that anyone has read this far and wants to prosecute me for forgetting THE American prog act, who are probably heavy prog, blues prog, or jazz anyways(or superb folk like MIDLAKE), but hopefully you get my rambling point that America and prog don't really fly in flyover country. Honestly, when half the country thinks that we need to cut a traitorous sociopath in chief some slack, well, that's half that would be staring at their dumb phone 30 seconds into something as entirely enjoyable as FM's "Phasors on Stun". Oh yeah, Canadian again, sorry.

So what have we here then? A 2002 release from Colorado based SINGULARITY, an ambitious suite of tightly packaged short pieces that, like any good relationship, repeat themselves just enough to justify their existence but not so much as to upset each other. In terms of, well, their singularity, and their juxtaposition of the despairing and the wistful, the enervated and the empowered,I think this compares somewhat to the debut by Australia's ANUBIS. Particularly successful are the brooding few opening numbers with creative bass work and appealing vocals, especially "Invictus"; the nasty "Inferno"; the harmony vocalizations of "All Comes Down"; the sweet ballad "Hold a Candle"; and the bass and synth rich closing instrumental "Infractus". Speaking of which, the keyboard palette is an asset of this band, and generates a spacey aura that is unusual in the American lexicon. While they are a trio that apparently borrowed broadly from RUSH in their previous album, this release establishes a working identity.

While this type of independent and collaborative triumph is destined for a small audience, it achieves an accessible yet sustaining blend of light, dark, and, axiomatically, what lies between.