Originally posted in Trollheart's Listening List, December 9 2016
Title: At Wild End
Artiste: Colin Bass
Year 2015
Nationality: British
Genre: Progressive Rock
Rank: Noob
3
Expectations: The guy used to be in Camel, so though I'm not as familiar with that band as I would like to be, they are giants of the prog scene, so I would expect this to be pretty good.
1. Return to Earth: A very soft, almost folky opening with nice chingly guitar; tune sounds really familiar when it gets going. Nice mid-pacer, and when the vocal comes in it's very warm and gentle. Yes, this is very pleasant.
2. We are one: This opens almost like the closing part of “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” by Genesis. Lovely slow piano and soulful vocal. Beautiful, almost lazy, and dreamy. Just gorgeous.
3. Walking to Santiago: Well that's odd: this opens with an old hymn, “He Who Would Valiant Be”, then breaks into a lovely uptempo acoustic guitar and what sounds like trumpet. So far this album has been gold.
4. Waiting for someone: Harp from Ben Mandelson and soft keys from Camel bandmate Andy Latimer earn this sumptuous ballad yet another Blue.
5. In another time: This kind of reminds me of Billy Joel, just the style not the song. More uptempo in a fairly gentle way and guided by honky-tonk piano, with also a feeling of early Springsteen (
Greetings from Asbury Park era) and Bob Seger too.
6. Szegereli eternal: Some lovely whistle and accordion makes for quite an ambient and Celtic-sounding instrumental (with some choral voices thrown in).
7. Darkness on Leather Lake: This is good, yes, but somehow not as good as the previous tracks. Rocks nicely, some great keyboard and organ. Reminds me very much of Jadis.
8. Bubuka Bridge: Weird little bassline then an almost salsa rhythm picks it up. Another short one, I'd say another instrumental? Another instrumental. Nice work on the pipes and whistles.
9. If I could stay: Another perfect ballad.
10. Girl from the northwest county: This has something of a jazzy/calypso feel to it that I don't really like that much. Yeah, it doesn't do it for me. First Orange. Probably only one too.
11. Up at sheep's bleat: Or maybe not. The rustic feeling evoked through the lyric is nice, but I don't like the spoken vocal. Nice piano though.
12. At Wild End: Ends strongly on another nice ballad, after stumbling a little towards the end.
Final result: Something of a surprise. I had hoped it would be a decent album, but it turned out to be really excellent. Often, solo albums from members of established acts can be very disappointing, but this one scores on almost every level. Real stunner.
Rating: 4.5/5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9zIchOB44g