Title: Love, Fear and the Time Machine
Artiste: Riverside
Year 2015
Nationality: Polish
Genre: Progressive Rock
Familiarity: I go back and forth on them: I've heard some albums I liked, some I was not so keen on.
6
Expectations: I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll enjoy this.
1. Lost (Why should I be frightened by a hat?): Leave it to Riverside to come up with the silliest title since “Apocalypse in 9/8 (Co-starring the delicious talents of Gabble Ratchet)! Good moody opener; the vocals of Mariusz Duda are as always a joy to listen to. Lovely organ line from Michał Łapaj with soft percussion then a sharper guitar cuts in and the song's tempo picks up. Great start. Why should he be frightened by a hat, anyway? AAAAHHHH!
2. Under the pillow: Lovely soft guitar, almost acoustic then it kicks up into a nice sort of mid-paced rocker with some fine fretwork.
3. #Addicted: Slick little bass intro from Mariusz before it runs along on an uptempo line, great little hook. Actually reminds me a lot of a-ha. Beautiful gentle little guitar and keyboard outro.
4. Caterpillar and the barbed wire: This has a very Marillion feel to it, like something off
Marillion.com perhaps.
5. Saturate me: Great keyboard intro from Łapaj and screaming guitar then also from Piotr Grudziński, instrumental for two minutes before the vocal comes in. Sounds like mellotron there (does anyone still use them?) and again I find this quite Marillionesque, sort of like “The Invisible Man” maybe.
6. Afloat: Beautiful little ballad which runs on repeated guitar lines and a gorgeous little organ.
7. Discard your fear: Another good song, but there's a problem developing, something that happens to me every time I listen to Riverside, and that is that, the above apart, I'm not really getting that much into any of these songs. They're all good, in their way, but I doubt I'll remember any once the album is over, which is a pity, as I feel on repeated listenings it might grow on me, or reveal some hidden depths I'm not seeing here. But on first listen, it's just not engaging me as I had hoped it would.
8. Towards the blue horizon: All right, this is eight minutes long. Let's make a conscious effort to describe it. See my problem though? If I was really into this album I wouldn't need to make a con --- anyway. Yeah. Lovely pastoral intro on guitar, with a soft and very endearing vocal which (sorry again) just plunders Hogarth's songbook for all it's worth. Lovely rippling piano. This may be another favourite. Sort of hear echoes of Spock's Beard in here at times too. Yah, really enjoyed that.
9. Time travellers: There's nothing quite like a strumming acoustic guitar to start a song. Great, swaying ballad with a really upbeat message in the lyric. The organ again is amazing. Sort of Floydesque guitar around the midpoint. You know, maybe this album has a chance after all. Making a strong showing here at the end.
10. Found (The unexpected flaw of searching): Again though, what is it with the weird titles? What does this even mean? Yeah I know, they're Polish, but still. Well it opens with a lovely introspective guitar (oh come on! I haven't used that word in quite a while now!) and again an upbeat ballad to close, and indeed it would seem, bookend with the opener. Is this a concept album? Not sure, but I feel there's a common thread running through it.
Final result: I don't want to write this album off, as I feel it will grow on me, but right now I'm not one hundred percent impressed with it, which is, as I said, a common reaction I have to Riverside. But I have hopes. The quality is there, maybe I just need to keep digging to find the buried treasure. On that basis, I'll give this a hopeful
Rating: 