The Flower Kings, Chapter 3: Stardust We Are

3) Stardust We Are (1997)

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Stardust We Are. The Flower Kings' third album (fourth if you count The Flower King, which I do). This is the one where The Flower Kings shoot for the stars. The first double album under The Flower King's banner – not the last. Home of some of the band's truly legendary tracks, and consistently voted one of their best albums, if not the best. So – do I agree?

Let's look at the figures first. The line-up is the same as on Retropolis and will remain unchanged until the year 1999. Hasse Fröberg sings a little more this time around – he's the leading man on one full track (“Kingdom of Lies”) and sings important lead parts on the title track and “Church of Your Heart”. The cover artwork is probably among the worst TFK have ever had – an abstract collage of planets and flowers, with the band member's heads clumsily pasted in. Oh well. Let's hope the music fares better, shall we?

Stardust We Are is basically one big celebration of just how great the world can be. The album is, famously, the home of its namesake song, the first TFK mega-epic (defined as anything longer than twenty minutes) since "Humanizzimo". There's no questioning the song's status as a classic, but what about the rest of the album? There's more amazing material on this album, but also, as we shall see, quite a bit of filler. Let's break it down!

The album opens with a classic. “In The Eyes Of The World” is just great. The fast intro gets your blood pumping from the get-go, the organ hook that announces the verse is absolutely unforgettable and the chorus is among the best Roine has written. The words ring very true with me: it's about being an outsider, laughing stock; a clown, and owning it, eyes of the world be damned. It's a ten-minute song chock full of musical ideas, each as cool and memorable as the last, and Jaime Salazar drums the heck out of it. The Flower Kings at their rocking best.

“Just This Once” is a track I'm less sure about. It's got a strange, chaotic opening but turns out to be a fairly sedate track. It seems to have some tension broiling under its skin but it's never really released. It just peeters out at the end, although I do like the melancholy mellotron tones it ends on.

In between those, we have another Bodinterlude (a twee cocktail jazzy bit called “A Room With A View”). There were a couple of Bodinterludes on the previous album, but Stardust We Are is absolutely chock full with the things. You either think they're filler or appreciate the way they set up the next “true” song every time. In most cases, I tend to take the latter option. If nothing else, Tomas Bodin knows how to set a mood.

“Church of your Heart” is another one of the more well-remembered songs on this album, one of those happy, uplifting singalong tracks that The Flower Kings do so well. It's a little too kumbaya for me, but it did grow on me. The lovely chord changes in the chorus, the Stolt-Fröberg vocal duet and the bombast in the bridge are hard to resist.

Let's prepare ourselves for a lengthy string of instrumentals. On both The Flower King (the album) and Back In The World Of Adventures, all the instrumentals in the middle make the albums drag a bit. As we shall see, that is absolutely not the case here.

First, we bring things down with “Poor Mister Rain's Ordinary Guitar”, a bit of acoustic guitar playing of the kind you get on many prog albums. I've a sneaking feeling Roine's guitar collection is anything but ordinary... It nicely puts you in the mood for “The Man Who Walked With Kings”, a beautiful, Hackett-era Genesis-inspired instrumental with a gorgeous pastoral melody and amazing electric guitar playing from mr. Stolt. It reminds me a lot of “The Pilgrims Inn”, but shorter and more on point. Goosebumps.

But the song that really makes disc one for me is “Circus Brimstone”, twelve minutes of pure, undiluted insanity. You gotta hand it to The Flower Kings: they may be firmly on the side of the angels, but damn if they don't know how to sound utterly evil if they want to. Of course, it's less of a “creepy serial killer” kind of evil and more of a “pantomime villain” kind of evil, gleeful, over the top and ultimately good-humoured. The return of happy themes is never too far away. “Circus Brimstone” is a joint Stolt/Bodin composition and there are a few unmistakable Bodinisms on this track; not least a sample of people talking backwards. It may be silly, but it's my kind of silly.

Hello again

Also my kind of silly: “Crying Clown”, the next Bodinterlude, delivering pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Boo hoo. Lots of clowns on this album.

Not so silly but very impressive: “Compassion”, the bombastic, grandiose closing track of disc one that proves that Roine doesn't need enormous song lengths to sound absolutely epic. There's a gorgeous guitar solo, ethereal voices and, of course, church organs for everybody. It has great lyrics, too. A fantastic closer.

Oh yeah, before I forget, there's also a bonus track. I have a confession for you: I hate bonus tracks. Either put it on the album or don't, but at least let the album end when it's supposed to, please! You can always put such things on a fan club release or a Japanese special edition… It's only hardcore fans who would be interested in this stuff anyway. Am I even enough of a hardcore fan? The track is nothing worthwile – just a few minutes of Tomas Bodin going bleepity-bloopity on the synth. I tend to skip it, if I remember to.

So, that's one CD over with and it's been pretty good so far. But how does the second one hold up? What you tend to get with prog double albums is that things run out of steam a little by the time the second disk comes along (The Lamb, The Wall, Marbles). Stardust We Are is an extreme example of this, I'm afraid. The first half of disc two is, there are no two ways about this, filler.

“The End of Innocence” is that rarest of things: a sad Flower Kings song. Something like this needs to connect emotionally for it to work, but I'm not really feeling this. It's eight minutes long and too lacking in dynamics to justify that length. “The Merry Go-Round” is happy again, and this one does have more of an oomph to it, with one or two entertaining themes along the way. It's structurally all over the place, and also a little bit too long.

Disclaimer: Prog-Rama does not endorse nor oppose any particular brand of filler.

But if any song gets first prize in the filler category, it has to be “Don Of The Universe”. A sitar plays around a very laid-back rendition of the “Stardust We Are” theme. It's an okay idea, but why on Earth is this seven minutes? There aren't even any chord changes! The bass just repeats and repeats and repeats. I guess this is supposed to be meditative music. I can respect the band's dedication to play as many kinds of music as is humanly possible and put it all on their albums, but this really kills any kind of flow the previous song had going for it. This Don makes me an offer I'd rather refuse.

It's up to the next two songs to wake us up: “Different People” and “Kingdom of Lies” are both verse-chorus songs that may not be masterpieces but at least they're tight and catchy. “Different People” is a spacey hippie track with lots of sound effects and a lovely bass line. It's also one of the few songs I know that ends on a fade-in rather than a fade-out. Groovy. “Kingdom of Lies” has a driving blues beat and gives Hasse Fröberg the opportunity to flex his vocal chords a bit. Alright, no more filler.

As for the Bodinterludes: “Pipes of Peace” is a pure church organ track (it was bound to happen someday) that opens the second disk pretty much out of left field. It contains some variations on the “Stardust We Are” theme before we've even heard the song proper, which is pretty cool; already we are anticipating what's to come. “A Day At The Mall”, on the other hand, is just a throwaway gag.

If there's any Bodinterlude that I have nothing but good things to say about, it's “If 28”, a heartbreakingly beautiful melancholy piano piece. It's another preview of the “Stardust We Are” melody, and the most succesful one by far. I could listen to Tomas Bodin play piano all day.

At the eleventh hour, the band finally gets the chance to redeem the second disc with “Ghost of the Red Cloud”, one of my favourite shorter Flower Kings songs. It's got a reggae beat, one of the catchiest tunes imaginable and a killer guitar solo to boot. Wonderful. On thing bugs me though. For some reason, Roine calls it a “cowboy song”, while it's clearly a pirate song! I can't be the only one who hears a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum in there, right? I wanna learn to play this on the accordion.

Above: Me staring at accordion in bewilderment.

“Hotel Nirvana” is another interlude (written by Stolt this time). I suppose we needed another palate cleanser before the main course. It's a heavy, spooky, atmospheric piece, and it's intriguing to think what kind of song this would have been, had Roine elected to make a full song out of this.

So, the title song, then. It's been a long time coming, hasn't it? It feels like the entire album, certainly the second disc, is merely a long prologue to The Epic. Fortunately, “Stardust We Are” more than delivers. Roine may struggle with six-to-eight minute songs on this album, he sure knows how to put a 25-minute song together. It's a delight, from the beautiful acoustic melody that opens it and returns a few more times, the big, dramatic chords, the uplifting lyrics, the ebb and flow of the instrumental sections, to of course that majestic finale during which the main “Stardust We Are” melody finally reveals itself in all its glory, with Hasse Fröberg giving the vocal performance of a lifetime. This is heavily inspired by the “Soon” section on Yes' “Gates of Delirium” (a song that TFK covered a few times, because they wear their infuences on their sleeve) and invokes the same feeling of majesty and intense satisfaction after being taken on such a journey. “Stardust We Are” is one of The Flower Kings' signature tracks and rightfully deemed a classic.

Science proves it: The Flower Kings are awesome

Roine Stolt, being the leader of a highly prolific prog rock band, is sometimes accused of being a perfectionist, and Roine himself would happily agree. I'm not sure if it's entirely true, though. Roine is a “go with the flow” kind of guy. Is Stardust We Are really the work of a perfectionist? On the contrary, I believe Roine is too easily satisfied sometimes. Song after song will sprout from that overactive creative brain of his. He has his musicians record them in no more than a few takes, and that'll be another TFK album finished. As we've seen time and time agan, this leads to very uneven albums, but it also preserves the magic of the moment and the sponaniety of working with these highly skilled musicians.

There's a strong element of spontaniety to Stardust We Are, but the album overall is ill-disciplined to the point of wild abandon. The first disc is very good, but there is a really significant lull at the start of the second disc, and the album doesn't really pick itself up again until the last few tracks. On the other hand, the good parts are among the band's very best work, and there's probably more than one disc's worth of really good material to justify the two-disc format.

So, how must I rate this? Even though Stardust We Are contains some of the best material of their career, I can't say I think it's the best Flower Kings album. As a whole, it is just too unbalanced. Its strong points can't be denied however, and it's definitely a must own for any fan of progressive rock.

RATING: Four and a half galaxies out of ten broomsticks and Pita Taufatofua's oiled-up torso

CHURCH ORGAN COUNT: Church organs, church organs everywhere! This is probably the most church organ-heavy Flower Kings album. There's church organs all over “Church of your Heart” and “Compassion”, while “Pipes of Peace” is a full-blown church organ solo.

BETTER 50 100 MINUTE VERSION:
CD1:
In The Eyes of the World
Church of your Heart
The Man Who Walked With Kings
Circus Brimstone
Compassion

CD2:
Pipes of Peace
The Merry Go-Round
Different People
Kingdom Of Lies
If 28
Ghost of the Red Cloud
Stardust We Are

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