There's no man in the mirror, just me… and I hate what I see!
So, I've either kicked off a trend or the time is right for The Flower Kings (probably the latter), because I see more people talking about TFK's back catalog all around the progosphere. That's great! Now that the second chapter of the Kingdom of Colours box set has been announced, the time could not better to examine the album that kicks it off.
What's to say about Adam & Eve, the album that had the difficult task of succeeding Unfold The Future? It's an album in the same line-up, with each player more comfortable in their role. Zoltán Csörsz really lets loose on this album with some of the most impressive drumming in all of TFK's career. Daniel Gildenlöw, rather than a special guest star, is now a fully integrated member of the band, which means that there are three singers on board with more or less equal billing. Everything is set for another doozy of an album.
And yet… I can't quite muster up the same enthousiasm for this one that I have for Unfold The Future. This is certainly not to fault Adam & Eve, which is a very solid entry into the TFK canon. In fact, this may be the first album so far with no filler at all. Every song is great in its own right and exactly where it needs to be on the album to work. The band, predictably, are on fine form throughout. I said this was their best line-up, and I certainly stand by that.
On the cover art, Adam and Eve are presented as the beauty and the beast, the angel and the ape, the hypermasculine and hyperfeminine. He is holding a crude weapon (the blade of Cain, perhaps?), she an apple and feathers. The songs don't necessarily pertain to the myth of the Garden of
Structurally, there's something interesting going on with regards to the three singers. Disregarding the three (relatively short) instrumentals, there's a division into what feels like four “chapters”. Two songs are sung mainly by Fröberg, then two by Gildenlöw, then two by Stolt, and at the end, “Driver's Seat” brings all three singers together. It is true that Stolt's role as a singer is much smaller on this album than it is on any other TFK album. He mostly lets his guitar do the talking here. That said, Stolt never fails to show up in the more downbeat sections of the big epics, even when Fröberg or Gildenlöw takes up the lion's share of the vocal duties.
Like the previous album, Adam & Eve features not one but two big epics, although at just under twenty minutes both, these two seem almost short, don't they? Not that you'd notice listening to “Love Supreme”, which is lovely. It's a song that slowly sucks you in, with spine-tingling sounds from Bodin's arsenal and lots of acoustic guitar. The song unfolds, similarly to “The Truth”, as a very free-flowing but still quite cohesive piece with an unmistakable hippie atmosphere. It doesn't really escape the looming shadow of its big sister, but it's a very beautiful epic.
“Cosmic Circus” is a beautiful short song, a fine example of TFK excelling in the pop format. Bodin's keyboard theme, Csörsz's impressive drumming and Fröberg's vocals all battle for attention. There's a warm, nostalgic vibe to this song, which flows neatly into a Bodin-penned instrumental called “Babylon”. Its theme is very similar to "Cosmic Circus's" theme. Strangely, it was “Babylon” of all things that turned into a mainstay of the band's live set, being part of a medley with “Stardust We Are” and “What If God Is Alone”. Jonas Reingold shows remarkable restraint on this song by keeping his bass completely stationary until the very end, which is an awesome effect. The entire album has been very bright and upbeat so far, but the doom bell starts ringing, and midnight is upon us...
The two epics that bookend the album may be great, the distinction of the album's best track undoubtedly falls upon “A Vampire's View”. It seems every prog artist writes a song about vampires sooner or later (see also: IQ, Steve Hackett, Devin Townsend and fellow Swede FreddeGredde (who remembers him?)) but TFK really bit the bullet with this one. It's a full-blown gothic-horror musical theatre piece, sung with gusto by Daniel Gildenlöw, the biggest ham in prog. It's kitschy and it probably wouldn't have worked with any other singer, but it works and it's ridiculously fun. The famous bolero beat returns and the band gets a great gothic instrumental section in, while a piano outro courtesy of mr. Bodin wraps things up neatly, but there's no denying that Gildenlöw steals the show here. “A Vampire's View” is a tantalizing look into what might have been a new direction for The Flower Kings had Gildenlöw stayed with the band, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The band then double down on the Gildenlöw-led madness with the title track, an abrasive, almost punky hard rock attack in which the man gets to demonstrate why he used to be in a Led Zeppelin tribute band. The band let loose on all fronts in the instrumental section, with Jonas Reingold playing some of the fastest bass licks I've ever heard. There's a slightly quieter middle-eight with Stolt singing, but the impression of a loud and chaotic track is what you're left with. The lyrics to "Adam & Eve", about the treacherous minefield of human sexuality, are also a lot racier than the usual Stolt fare.
Stolt's singing portion is up next, and he has a tough act to follow. He has a good go at it, though, in “Starlight Man”, a surprisingly sweet and catchy pop song where he gets to stretch his vocal folds as far as they will go (which is farther than you'd think). “Timelines” is a funny one: Its beginning is a cacophonic wall of noise, with lots of Bruniusson “weirding it up”, but the main portion of the track is a cool bit of blues. The choruses are proggier but still have a bluesy feel. It doesn't take long for the chaos to return, though. It's a good track but perhaps a bit uneven.
All this leads to the next epic: “Driver's Seat”, in which all three singers get a turn to shine. It's a three-act epic, with the first act led by Gildenlöw, while Stolt and Fröberg are the usual vocal tag-team for the remainder of it. Compared to the opening track, it's a slightly darker, busier and angrier epic, though not to the extent of “Devil's Playground”. It has some very strong melodic hooks going on, Zoltán Csörsz is playing his butt off and the few seconds of silence between act two and three are an interesting idea. It's a highly enjoyable song to be sure, but in spite of fantastic performances all around, I'm missing a real structure here. Even though there are three distinct acts, I'm not feeling any kind of buildup, a sense that it's building toward a climax like, say “Stardust” or “Devil's Playground”, or even “Humanizzimo”. I can't help but feel slightly dissatisfied with this song.
Fortunately, there's still one more to go: “Blade of Cain”. It's nothing too complicated: An emotional, grandiose guiar solo over a beautiful chord progression, a great key change in the middle, a climax at the end and an ethereal reprise of the “Love Supreme” chorus at the very end, so that we can still have our beloved bookends. Stolt may not be very prominent on this album as a singer, he certainly leaves his mark as a guitar player. It's a simple but highly effective album closer that still leaves us with a very satisfying conclusion.
Adam & Eve is a perfectly good album, but I can't help but view it as the lesser version of Unfold The Future. That is really not fair to it, but the feeling is there nonetheless. A large part of it is that there's a bright, uplifting epic in the beginning and a darker, busier epic at the end. Both epics are lesser than their Unfold counterparts. The album doesn't have the sharp, freaky and jazzy edges that Unfold The Future had.
Where the album shines is in its shorter songs, the high standard of all the material, the high level of consistency and the unexpected breakthough of Daniel Gildenlöw. It seemed at the time The Flower Kings were going to keep on truckin' with three singers, and that Gildenlöw's influence was going to push them in a more theaterical direction.
Unfortunately, at this point The Flower Kings seem to be unable to keep a line-up together for more than two albums. 2005 will be another year without a new album, and when next we meet them, they will have evolved in a considerably different direction. In fact, the next album we will review will not actually be a Flower Kings album at all! Stay tuned...
RATING: A trail of bloodstained magnolias.
CHURCH ORGAN COUNT: Plenty during, what else, the climax to “A Vampire's View” and the opening to “Driver's Seat”.
BETTER 50 MINUTE VERSION:
Love Supreme
Cosmic Circus
Babylon
A Vampire's View / Days Gone By
Driver's Seat
Blade of Cain
A&E maybe suffered from too high expectations at the time coming after UtF. I know I had them and hearing the news that Daniel had joined the band full time I think we all were expecting a massive follow up just like when Flower Power followed SwA. Instead we may have got what can be compared to just getting disc 2 of Flower Power. Still lots of great stuff but not quite the masterpiece we thought...or is it?
BeantwoordenVerwijderenNo bonus tracks for Adam & Eve you say, well there are indeed some from the final Fan Club cd's in 2004 and 2005 that were recorded at this time and fit in perfectly. When reworking the running order we will add in 3 of those songs and move things around to give this disc a powerful opening and close. I think this gives a very different listening experience from the original running order that starts and ends very quietly. And we will make a key change by not starting things off with the large epic. Let's be honest, anything would suffer when comparing to The Truth so I think it was a mistake to lead off with it and invite those comparisons.
We will instead start off with "Mr. Hope Goes to Paris" from the 2004 Fan Club cd. The perfect short intro song with loud pipe organ and guitar. Wake up and take notice! After this we go right into "Drivers Seat". This works perfectly and "Drivers Seat" is a great leadoff song for this album because it has Daniel, Hasse, and Roine all singing lead so it makes a statement as to this iteration of the band. But "Drivers Seat" makes a great closing song too so what to do? Well the song has a natural break in it where there is a few seconds of silence so we will just follow the "I Am The Sun" example and split it into two parts so we can open AND close with it.
After Part 1 of "Drivers Seat" the next song is another new one to this album, "The Crown & The Cross" taken from the 2005 Fanclub cd and recorded roughly the same time, meant originally for a Kaipa reunion I love this song and it fits well between the two larger epics. The next few songs will follow as the original running order, "Love Supreme", "Cosmic Circus", "Babylon", "A Vampires View", "Days Gone By". I moved "Adam & Eve" to the end of the album because I thought having two Daniel sung songs in a row didn't fit well and better to spread them out. Instead following "Days Gone By" with another bonus song "King of Grief" (from Fanclub 2005) moody and sort of sad instrumental that fits with the songs preceding and forms a sort of a mini 3 piece Vampire Suite.
The title track fits after "Timelines" and then immediately after Daniels scream go right into "Blade of Cain", then part 2 of "Driver's Seat" comes back as sort of an encore. Works really well. You want to slightly edit "Mr. Hope Goes to Paris" so the gap at the end is not too long, you want it to go right into "Drivers Seat" without any break at all. Try this and see what I mean. Same with A&E and Blade of Cain.
All told this adds less then 10 minutes of new material (all of it excellent). The double bookends of Driver's Seat as well as Love Supreme/Blade of Cain give this album an identity and better cohesion. Production wise I think A&E is one of the best sounding albums in the TFK catalog - Jonas in particular sounds incredible here.
Again not meant as a replacement to the original release just an alternative listen when you want more and also so the best of the bonus songs aren't lost.
ADAM & EVE - Expanded Edition
(14 songs, 1 hour, 28 minutes)
1. Mr. Hope Goes To Paris
2. Drivers Seat (Part One) (ends at 10:48)
3. The Crown & The Cross
4. Love Supreme
5. Cosmic Circus
6. Babylon
7. A Vampires View
8. Days Gone By
9. King Of Grief
10. Starlight Man
11. Timelines
12. Adam & Eve
13. The Blade of Cain
14. Drivers Seat (Part Two)