Hey man you're more than welcome! Delighted you liked it and stoked that someone actually posted one of my recs!
And now, back to The Worker Bee...
Epicloud --- The Devin Townsend Project --- Recommended by Ki (God bless 'im!)
I knew, and to some extent still know, very little about Mr Townsend, but even to someone like me it's obvious the man is either as much a workaholic as Ki, or has one or two clones running about. You just seriously can't release that much material and be human, can you?
But Ki had been raving about this and it had been sitting on my computer for some time before I decided what the hell, I'll see what all the fuss is about ho hum.
I began sitting on my bed and suddenly found myself in the neighbour's garden, wondering how I got there and who would have to pay for the broken window! Yeah, I was completely blown away!
The thing about this album is --- and I know it's a cliche but it's true --- there's not one bad track on it. Not only that, every successive track is better than the one that preceded it. You wait in a sort of mounting sense of dread as it goes on. You love it, are in love with it, but you know --- you just know --- there's a turkey coming somewhere. But you'll forgive DT because the rest is so awesome. So where is the turkey? That track was amazing, that one was double-amazing. That has to be the standout -- no, the next one --- no, the NEXT one!
And on it goes. And the album runs out finally and there is no turkey in sight. Every single track is a gem. From the Queen/Steinman tiny but punchy opener "Effervescent" (well named because this album fizzes, pops and buzzes!) to the closer there's no way to choose a best track, because it's every track. Cliches would abound if I really got into it, but there's really only one cliche I care to use, and seems to fit: you NEED to hear this album! Like now! Beg, borrow, steal it or ask me for it! If you're really brassic someone has kindly uploaded the whole album to YouTube I see! It won't quite change your life, but it sure will make it seem oh so much sweeter!
If you really pushed me, I mean if you stuck a Glock in my mouth and said you had better come up with some favourite tracks or you'll be looking for a new head, then, "Lucky animals", a stomping rock rhythm if there ever was one, the almost pop/AOR "Save our now", pure rock opera goodness "Liberation", heads-down rockout Heaven where Devin almost channels, er, Noddy Holder (!) and pulls Meat Loaf along for the motorbike ride, the swaying power ballad "Where we belong", where you can just see the crowd filling the stadium with lighters and waving their arms, the anthemic "Angel", surely the best closer to an album that you wonder how it could end any better than it's been so far -- look, you could literally drop your stylus anywhere on this record (old codger reference # 1,490) and love what you hear. There is no point at which this album should be or can be skipped. It's bursting with the kind of quality I haven't seen in a very very long time. I literally can say nothing bad about it, except that it has the bad taste to not last forever.
Rec Rating: A perhaps unbelievable but very deserved
10/10. Honestly, if I could flout the laws of mathematics I'd give it an eleven. Really.
Thanks Ki! I'll forever be in your debt for pointing me in a direction I'd have been unlikely to have headed on my own.