You certainly have to hand it to prog bands when it comes to names. They come up with the weirdest ones, both for albums and songs and also for the bands themselves. I mean: “A plague of lighthouse keepers”?
A Trick of the Tail?
Lark's Tongues in Aspic? Now we have the oddly-named Elephants of Scotland who, just to confuse you, are not Scottish at all, nor even British, but hail from the USA. Why did they choose this name for their band? Who knows? But they've been around since 2010 and are the project of yet another multi-instrumentalist, Adam Rabin. Anything to Yes's famous guitarist? I don't know, but his entry in Wiki doesn't mention any brother or son, so I'd assume perhaps not.
Execute and Breathe – Elephants of Scotland – 2014
Since their formation the band, who tend to prefer the abbreviation EoS (not to be confused with the famous Canon camera!) appear to have been busy, releasing a total of three albums in four years, with their most recent only hitting earlier this year. This however is their second, and though I admit I have not yet heard it all the way through (until now, that is) I have heard the odd track while shuffling through my ipod, and what I've heard has certainly left me wanting to explore further.
So let's do just that.
An almost orchestral intro is quickly supplanted by a funky bass and then warbling keyboards of the kind our departed friend Urban Hatemonger always hated as “A different machine” gets the album underway. EoS seem to be one of those bands who switch up the vocals a la Alan Parsons Project and others, and here I find Dan MacDonald, who only sings on this and one other track, very reminiscent of Marillion's Steve Hogarth. A good rocky opener, slowing down in the middle before heading off on a super keyboard solo. Although I am only now experiencing the album for the first time as I say, it seems to be gaining favourable reviews, as ProgArchives have assigned it a four-star rating. The band also performed at the annual Marillion Weekend festival in Montreal and received a standing ovation, so they must be good.
The opener is good, but I'll admit I'm not salivating or anything. It's competent prog, certainly, but is it anything to get excited about? Well, not yet, not for me, but we've a long way to go yet. “The other room” has a nice guitar and keyboard line running through it, with a repeating guitar riff in the background acting as a kind of motif. It's a good rocky tune, but again I don't see it being anything terribly special. Adam takes the vocal here himself; not sure whether I prefer his singing to that of MacDonald. I do like “Amber waves”, with its soft then harder piano line and which I assume is the first ballad on the album. There's definitely something catchy about the melody, which is something I have not been able to say up to this point. There's kind of a sense of Deacon Blue about it in parts, I feel. Some very nice keyboard passages, courtesy of Adam, who also takes vocals here. This is the longest single track on the album, just over eight minutes, which is good in a way as there are no twenty-minute prog epics to contend with. They can be great, as in “Supper's ready”, or terribly boring, as in “The last human gateway”, so it's always something of a gamble when you see one on an album, and you do, more often than not. Nice to see EoS breaking the pattern.
“TFAY” has an atmospheric little run-in, crying guitar, honking synth, barely-there percussion before it powers forward on rolling drums and sharp guitar, kicking into a nice eighties Genesisesque run. The third and last vocalist on this is guitarist John Whyte, who has a vaguely more feminine sounding voice, slightly Anderson-like. The song is a nice uptempo rocker with some great guitar, good strong ending and we're into “Boxless”, which opens on phased guitar and a sort of ticking percussion with darkly ominous synth. Adam Rabin is back on vocals, the guitar betraying an early Police influence, with a certain sense of the east in the melody too. A slower track than the previous one, I still wouldn't call it anywhere close to a ballad, and there's some nice exuberant keyboard running through it.
Although I said “Amber waves” was the longest track, and it is, I qualified that by saying it's the longest
single track, because if you add parts one and two of “Endless” together you get a total of over eleven minutes. Part one opens very like the closing section on “Forgotten sons” by Marillion; hard guitar, rolling keys, bouncy rhythm, and again it's Rabin who retains the mike for this song, though the first part is instrumental. It's his last stint on vocals as part two begins, this running for close to eight minutes and starting off on a very gentle acoustic guitar, everything slowing right down for a very reflective second half. Or not. Midway through rolling drums crash in and warbling keyboard kick up the tempo considerably before ending on a nice soft piano line. We come to a close then with the final vocal from Dan MacDonald as “Mousetrap”, another longish song at just under seven minutes – literally: one second under! - takes us out with a punchy rocker with a sort of tribal rhythm and very much a look back to
Abacab in parts.
TRACK LISTING AND RATINGS
1. A different machine
2. The other room
3. Amber waves
4. TFAY
5. Boxless
6. Endless pt 1
7. Endless pt 2
8. Mousetrap
Yeah, it's decent but I don't find myself rushing to hear the rest of their material, which I have. This might take a few more listens to get properly into; there are certainly some nice ideas there, but whether they're executed (hah) as well as they could be I'm not so sure. I'm going to reserve judgement for the time being. Might come back to this.