ORANGE
MERCATOR PROJECTED EAST OF EDEN
I didn’t enjoy Mercator Projected. First: it’s an hour long, and second: it’s a lackluster progressive album. Now don’t get me wrong, I love progressive rock, but like I stated in my review of Yes’s Close To The Edge, the word “progressive” shouldn’t mean innaccessible - enjoyable to only bearded fellows, and it certainly shouldn’t mean overlong. But that’s exactly what Mercator Projected is.
Opening number “Northern Hemisphere” is probably the most accessible song on the LP. The familiar hook and rhythm and the reverby vocals make it stand out, but there’s no other song that sounds like it. The rest of the album is, in fact, very different from Northern Hemisphere, becoming less funky and more folky, at times more jazzy, and certainly psychedelic. Now you may be thinking, “The album sounds like it’s too disjointed to be progressive,” to which you would be right in one aspect: it’s an especially disjointed album. Thing is, it’s also a very moody album, so it doesn’t necessarily matter that track two sounds nothing like track one, and so on, if they all feel the same. However, when all is said and done, Mercator Projected is more Rock than Prog Rock.
Listen to Mercator Projected if you’re a diehard prog fan, but if you’re just starting out, or want to know what all the fuss is a about, you could do much, much better.
4.9