2. The Tangent –
The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery
Andy Tillison, too,
got set back by a close brush with death (heart attack). As a result,
he lost interest in music for a while, but some unfortunate news
events were the catalyst to his return. The Tangent are back and
they've got a few bones to pick. Together with Marillion's Fuck Everyone And Run
and Roger Water's Is This The Life We Really Want, The Slow
Rust of Forgotten Machinery feels like the closing part of a
trilogy that laments the current state of the world, where
misinformation rules, crooks are kings and the pillars of western
peace and demoracy are rusting, rusting slowly. All three are marked
by anger, sadness and generous usage of the F-word.
On the strength of
its first three tracks alone, this album sails smoothly to the top of
my list, with a beautiful pocket symphony about elephants opening the
show, followed by a ten-minute instrumental that jorneys from prog to
jazz to metal and back but gels together the way only the best prog
rock can. Not-quite-title-song “Slow Rust” then takes a turn for
the decidedly political. It's an unusual move for Tillison, but then,
these are unusual times. The song is mainly about how the reactionary media twist human stories of tragedy into xenophobic propaganda, turning compassion into fear and hate. Meanwhile Tillison makes
some room for empathy towards the real protagonists of this story:
all those who have had to flee their homes as a result of conflicts
they wanted no part in.
More importantly,
“Slow Rust” is a fantastic prog epic, incredibly
well-constructed, exciting and satisfying from beginning to end. It's
one of my favourite songs of the year. As usual, there's fantastic
guitar work by Luke Machin, who is younger than I am (what am I doing
with my life?) and Jonas Reingold is, quite simply, the best bass
player in the world.
It's far from a
flawless album. “A Few Steps Down The Wrong Road”, the album's
other epic, isn't so much a song as it is an essay. It describes a
once-proud country's descent into mad xenophobia and unhinged
nationalism, the trick being that, until the last moment, it's kept
vague whether it's about Brexit Britain, Trumpmerica, or something
else altogether, leading to a nice “gotcha!” moment at the end.
It's chilling, powerful and important stuff, but not necessarily a
great piece of music; whatever's going on musically is completely
overruled by the words.
It's the end of 2017
and this is one of those albums that I need in my life. As I watch
the world news in ever-incresing bafflement, it's good to know that
there's still people out there fighting the good fight. So yes, it's
almost a pity that a better album got made in 2017.
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