Trollheart

As probably everyone knows, I have literally thousands of albums on my hard disk waiting to be listened to. Some of them may be there, still untackled, after I die. But I’d like to make a start here by choosing one and, as it were, diving into the pile.

Hopefully I won’t come off as badly as Peter Griffin did above, though I imagine there will be some of these albums that will very much fail to live up to any expectations I may have had. Still, the only way to find out is to start chipping away…

So here I go.

Album title: Silverfade
Artist: The Dreaming Tree
Nationality: English
Year: 2015
Chronology: 4
The Trollheart Factor: 0
Why did I download this? I liked the name, and it reminded me of several other “trees” - the song “The Hanging Tree” on Arena’s 1998 albumThe Visitor, Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman’s album The Wishing Tree, and the band The Winter Tree, to name but a few.

Track Listing: Yesterday’s Tomorrow/Heart Shaped Bruises/Yours to Find/Forever Not Forever/Cherry Winters/Autumn Haze/Higgs/Jaded Summer Long/Every Minute Lost/Loose it Off/Song in 7/The Ocean/Kosovo/Zero to Type One

Comments: Okay well it sounds a little more like, I don’t know, a heavier Spandau Ballet when “Yesterday’s Tomorrow” begins. That’s not anything bad, but it sure doesn’t sound like prog rock to me, not even the prog pop of the likes of It Bites. I do like it though. Yeah it continues really rocky, the organs add some prog street cred but it’s sort of hard to see this as anything other than a straight pop rock album at the moment. “Heart Shaped Bruises” (hardly a prog song title) doesn’t do anything to change that, though again I really like it. Let’s see: Discogs calls this prog rock all right, but Prog Archives describes it as Crossover Prog. Probably closer to the truth I feel.

“Yours to Find” is another good uptempo track (wondering what these guys do with a ballad) with some very, er, ringy guitar, and now we may find out how they handle ballads, as Forever Not Forever” starts off slow and gentle, with a really lovely reflective guitar and synth sounds - oh but now the guitar is riffing and the percussion… nah, forget it. Another rocker. Well not quite. It does slow down after a bit into a kind of jazzy groove, and there’s some pretty superb guitar and a really nice piano passage. More of what can only be called jazz guitar on “Cherry Winters”, which might be the first track here I don’t like no I’m wrong, the chorus/bridge changes it totally. Don’t like the verse though. Ooh! Some really nice squealy organ, almost Bontempi. Retro! Superb blues guitar solo.

Almost heavy metal then for “Autumn Haze”, stomping along like a good thing, but it’s very basic rock and I can’t see this as any sort of prog. It’s completely guitar-driven, hardly even a role for the synth at all. Nah. Don’t like this one, not one bit. Okay there’s the organ now, but it’s definitely playing second fiddle, and yes, I’m aware that’s a mixed metaphor. “Higgs” doesn’t do anything for me either, but at least it’s short, as is the next one, just over a minute and a half, though “Jaded Summer Long” doesn’t do anything to re-establish the quality I was hearing from the beginning of the album, almost a punkish style to it. Not for me. I have higher hopes for “Every Minute Lost”, with a Jadis-lite sound, and a Pink Floyd style female vocal halfway. Yeah, much better. Not that it could have got much worse, to be honest. Let’s hope we’ve plumbed the depths, reached the valley floor and are now heading back on up the hill.

Well, I don’t know. “Loose it Off” (huh?) sounds kind of like a country music ballad, quite the Eagles feel to the vocal harmonies. I mean, again, I like it, in fact I really like it, but there’s no way I would consider it prog of any shape. Hmm. Now it’s turned into a kind of rocky rap. Very strange but quite appealing. “Song in 7” (again, huh?) is also very good, nice sharp guitar with quite the punch, while “The Ocean” kicks off with some lovely harmonica and gives me hope this may be the ballad I’ve been waiting for. Yeah it is. And it’s been worth waiting for too. “Kosovo” is pretty laid back too, not what I would have expected I must say. Gets pretty intense and dramatic later; one of the better tracks for sure, so it can be said that after a considerable dip this album is aiming to finish strongly. Well maybe not quite: “Zero to Type One” is a pretty heavy-handed “better wise up or we’re all going to die” sort of song which doesn’t do a lot for me, but it’s not terrible. Still, the album could have ended so much more strongly.

Track(s) I liked: “Yesterday’s Tomorrow/Heart Shaped Bruises/Yours to Find/Forever Not Forever/Every Minute Lost/Loose it Off/Song in 7/The Ocean/Kosovo”

Track(s) I didn't like: “Autumn Haze/Higgs/Jaded Summer Long”

One standout: “The Ocean”

One rotten apple: “Autumn Haze”

Overall impression: A really good album but I struggle to recognise or describe it as prog. Just seems more like straight-forward rock or even pop rock with the odd bit of proggy keyboard thrown in. No suites, no odd time signatures, no particularly strange lyrics. Enjoyable, but not prog, not for me.

Rating: 8.5/10

Future Plan: Probably unlikely to listen to the rest of their material but I don’t regret having listened to this.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018