12 STORIES DOWN

Maybe it was conceivable but I like to express my sincere condolences to the death of Pineapple Thief's last prog influences. The new Album "12 stories down" - which I pre ordered as a special edition because I was quite excited about it - features even less prog ingredients than it's antecessors, in actual fact not any. Even the mellotron is gone completely. Bruce Soord concentrates on, allowedly quite good, alternative/post rock riminiscent of former releases; with a pregnant discrepancy: he restricts to it. Whereas you could talk of slight prog influences on former releases such as "Variations on a dream" or "Abducting the unicorn" (some refused to look down on them as prog either, though) I eventually have to admit that "12 stories down" has no of these slight influences any longer.

But "12 stories down" is still a good album. Judged with different standpoints, ignoring prog, the album is absolutely felicitous. Something you like to listen to now and again, perfect for the car. I'd like to describe it with the term "slight fare"... I consider the bonus album "8 days later" to be even better. I would actually award the bonus album to be prog. It is much more diversified and provides explicitly more exciting compositions. "8 days later" is the second project of it's kind. The concept is that Bruce wrote it in just 8 days, just like "8 days", the first one.

I like to mention that I reviewed the limited edition which could be ordered at the homepage long before the official release. The official release will be remixed and contain less songs ( 4 in number) as you can read on the official homepage.

Two stars from the progressive point of view but definitely more in general. I like to add that I didn't incorporate the bonus album into my rating.

BTW - I wish you all the best for 2005!