THE LIGHTS OF A DISTANT BAY

Lately I've listened to a lot of Polish Neo-Prog (unbeatable combination: ProgArchives and YouTube!) and found a whole new world of good music. The word 'new' refers only to the fact that these several bands I'm hearing for the first time, not that the musical style would be anyhow unfamiliar to me. MOONRISE is a good example of it. It's melodic, clean-sounding and well produced Neo comparable to Hogarth-era MARILLION and PENDRAGON with the emphasis on keyboards and guitars. Like the reviewers before me have pointed out, this music is "safe" and easily pleases any friend of accessible and melodic Neo-Prog. There are no bad tracks at all, everything is, in a word, pleasant. The negative side of it is that it's not very original or deeply impressive; the delighted first impression probably loses its power as time passes. It's quite obvious that the world is crowded with gifted bands like these, even if one may never come across them without the helping hand of Internet.

The core of MOONRISE are multi-instrumentalist and composer Kamil Konieczniak and singer Lukasz Gall. In this debut album Kamil plays all the instruments, which is remarkable as the music doesn't suffer at all of instrumentally narrow or thin nature. Gall's voice is pleasant, it reminds me a bit of Kim Beacon on Tony Banks's A Curious Feeling. The compositions flow nicely and carry also extended lengths (7-10 minutes) without losing the touch. There's emotion but it never reaches pathos; for example IQ packs their music with much more drama. This is mellower. But that's just fine as I often enjoy mellow prog. So, this is a very recommendable band if you enjoy safe and clean Neo-Prog. 3½ stars, rounded up for the good cover art and album length (53 minutes).