The Flower Kings, Chapter 9: Paradox Hotel

9) Paradox Hotel (2006)

The world is grooving to a brand new beat, the ground is swaying below our feet...

The fallout of Adam & Eve brought turmoil for The Flower Kings. First Zoltán Csörsz, then Daniel Gildenlöw said goodbye to the band in somewhat less-than-perfectly-cordial circumstances.

In the USA, it was the height of the paranoid Bush years and Gildenlöw, being the left-wing firebrand that he is, refused to join the band for their Amercian tour if it meant having his fingerprints taken. Roine basically responded with a shrug, went on tour anyway and didn't invite him back. Looking back, Gildenlöw's time with The Flower Kings was probably too short. It remains tantalizing to think of the places further collaboration might have taken them, and now that Stolt and Gildenlöw are back together in the supergoup The Sea Within – along with the omnipresent Jonas Reingold – we may have a lot to look forward to.

While Roine didn't feel the need to recruit a new third singer, no band can be without a drummer. Marcus Liliequist had already spent some time getting acquainted with the band during their tour as Circus Brimstone. A goofball even by TFK's standards, Liliequist was alredy featured on both Stolt and Bodin's most recent solo albums, but this would be his first and only studio album with The Flower Kings. Liliequist is a very talented young man, but it's folly to compare him to Csörsz, so I'm not going to. His style is more of a return to the serving role of Jaime Salazar. That's not a bad thing.

In addition to Csörsz and Gildenlöw, saxophone player Ulf Wallander is also absent from this record – as he was from Adam & Eve. This was part of a move on Roine's part to start working more as a “band”. Instead of recording all parts separately, The Flower Kings started to record live in the studio more often. As they were now down to a five-man line-up on stage, that's how they recorded their studio work.

Paradox Hotel is the band's fourth and, so far, last double album. The album has a lot of things going for it. For one, it has my favourite title of any TFK album. That doesn't count for much, but it's still true. Also, it has my favourite TFK cover artwork; a lovely cartoon with caricatures of all the band members – another endearing example of Roine's sense of humour.

As for the music… well, every album by this band is a mixed bag to some extent, but this is a rather extreme example. It is a paradox of an album indeed. It subverts many things we have come to expect from The Flower Kings.

For one thing, the opening is not very strong. The first track, “Check-In”, has a promising start, with a sample from a rocket launch. The announcer excitedly counts down from ten, and then… nothing happens. Instead of some cool riff coming in, we hear the ping-pong balls from “Rythm of Life” (Retropolis) again! A very strange start.

After that little Bodin joke, the album proper gets down to business, as “Monsters and Men” is another one of those 20-minute mega-epics that TFK have down to a fine art form by now. Except “Monsters and Men” just… isn't great. What's wrong? The piano opening is fine, there's some hummable themes going on, Fröberg's on top of his vocal game, the song feels like a coherent whole, so why isn't this any better? There just isn't any excitement. The whole thing just plods along at low-to-mid tempo with nothing really interesting or subversive happening along the way. None of the exccentricities, the unexpected tempo changes, the sharp edges, the unbridled whirlwind of creativity that make other TFK epics so much fun. If this was the first attempt at a marathon track from a beginning band, I'd give it a pass, but not from the band that made “The Truth Will Set You Free”. It's Roine by numbers. He can do much, much better than this, and has many times. To his credit, Roine himself knows and admits he missed the mark with this one. Tellingly, “Monsters and Men” was never played live.

It's up to “Jealousy” to pick up the pieces. On a different album, this little piano ditty (reminiscent of “The Navigator” or “Solitary Shell”, but with much darker lyrics) might have been a throwaway breather, but its juxtaposition of a sweet melody and a nasty lyric make it more than that. Surprisingly good.

“Hit Me With A Hit” is a fun, offbeat pop song that I don't have much to say about. It's a lightly mocking meta commentary on pop stardom. It's alright.

Is Roine a fan of this movie?

It takes Paradox Hotel until its fifth track to finally hit pay dirt and give us something truly great. “Pioneers of Aviation” is a classic Flower Kings instrumental. First, there's respective solo spots for Bodin, Liliequist and Reingold before the main theme kicks in, one of those instantly memorable Flower Kings melodies that do a great job of invoking the spirit of adventure and the feeling of flight that the inventors of the flying machines must have felt. Wonderful and romantic. The Flower Kings wouldn't be The Flower Kings if there wasn't a dramatic bit of church organ to top it off. Does the plane crash at the end?

“Lucy Had A Dream” is a fun one. It starts off as a dark lullaby before it flips the table and goes off to the circus. Yes, it ends with a drawn-out psychotic clown theme. They've dabbled in circus music before, but this is probably as demented as these things have ever sounded (Bodin gets a wrtiting credit, of course). It's deeply silly, but I'll take silly Flower Kings over dull Flower Kings any day.

The next song, however, is a real problem. There are vanishingly few Flower Kings songs that I actively dislike, but I hereby nominate “Bavarian Skies” for the title of Worst Song by The Flower Kings. It's overlong and musically uninteresting, and the lyrics are downright horrible. There's no other way to put this, folks. Far be it from me to say musicians should stay out of politics, but maybe it's not a great idea to write a song about this particularly sensitive subject (from a villain's perspective, no less) if your mastery of the English language is a bit dodgy. The severity of the subject matter just goes beyond Roine's ability as a songwriter, plain and simple. I simply have no idea what he's trying to say here. What message, what idea is being communicated? I'm sure his intentions were good, that he meant to say something about the banality of evil and the monster inside all of us, and all that. It doesn't work. Not even one bit. Nothing comes across but the ramblings of a deeply unpleasant character. Whatever message this is supposed to have gets completely muddled by the clunky and confused lyrics. It's a mess.

Those were some stern words, but I care about music and I must be honest. Fortunately, “Self-consuming Fire” is another great one. As sparse Spanish guitars set a melancholy mood, the song reveals itself to be an intense, emotional rock song with great lyrics and great guitar work. Short but sweet.

“Mommy Leave The Light On” brings us back to early Genesis, with acoustic and electric twelve-string guitars and vaguely ominous lyrics. I would have liked the song to evolve into an actual nightmare (like “The Musical Box” or “Suppers Ready”) but instead it segues into one of the most happy, upbeat songs in the entire TFK canon: “End on a High Note”. You know this one. It's the one that goes la-di-da. There's more to it than that though; a heavy rocking section and an instrumental bit of vintage prog make this a classic Flower Kings track and a great way to close disc one.

Yikes, that was a rocky ride. But don't jump ship just yet! Here's another paradox for you: Paradox Hotel is the only TFK double album where the second disc is better than the first. The first disc had a few missteps, but the second half of Paradox Hotel is basically wall-to-wall awesome. It really brings out the best in the entire band.

One Minor Giant Step for mankind

“Minor Giant Steps” is a riff on Yes' “And You And I” and an indicator of what a Roine Stolt/Jon Anderson collaboration is going to sound like. “Touch My Heaven” is a Tomas Bodin song, and possibly his best. It's an intensely personal song about struggling with addiction, sung with emotion and integrity by Hasse Fröberg. Stolt's guitar solo is pure class. It stands out all the more because TFK don't really do personal songs that often. “The Unorthodox Dancing Lesson” is a really fun, bonkers instrumental in 13/4.

The goodies keep on coming. “Man of the World” is a great pop song. “Life Will Kill You” is undoubtedly the best song Hasse Fröberg wrote for the Flower Kings and one that he still regularly plays with his own band HFMC. It's a heavy rocker and a great song to headbang to. Parts of it are also in 13/4, so never let it be said that Fröberg doesn't know his odd time signatures. “The Way The Waters Are Moving” is a sparse piano ballad about the 2004 tsunami. It may seem like another topic that is a little too much for Roine to handle, and indeed, some lyrics are clunky (“Now this ain't right...”) but it's a lot more heartfelt than I initially thought.

All the same, the best song on the album was written, at least musically, by Jonas Reingold (the lyrics are from Stolt and Fröberg, making this one of the most collaborative TFK songs). “What If God Is Alone” is the best-remembered song on the album, with the longest shelf-life as a live favourite. A wonderfully melodic 5/4 track with great buildup and emotional payoff. It's spine-tingling all the way through and always a highlight whenever it's played live. Hasse Fröberg, who is on fine form anyway, delivers one of his all-time-best performances. "What If God Is Alone" is my favourite TFK track under ten minutes. When I think of Paradox Hotel, I think of this song.

The title song, “Paradox Hotel” is another nice heavy pop-rock stomper that turned into another live favourite. For the final song, “Blue Planet”, The Flower Kings do that thing they do and bring back themes from the beginning, in this case from “Monsters and Men”. I wasn't keen on that song and I don't care for “Blue Planet” much either. But hey, it's a tradition!

So, what's the verdict on Paradox Hotel? It's different. It's almost an upside-down, bizarro-universe Flower Kings album. The longer songs are not always great, the highights are shorter ones. Disc two is better than disc one. Instead of starting strong and peetering out at track five, it has a mediocre start and doesn't hit its stride until track five. Bodin, Reingold and Fröberg present some the strongest songs of their career, while Stolt himself seems to miss the mark as often as he gets it right. Most noticably: the album isn't all that proggy. Not that I mind; it is simply an observation. Most songs are simply built around one solid idea and don't stray too far from there. Paradox Hotel is The Flower Kings' pop album.

It might seem I'm a little down on this album, but I honestly do like it. While it certainly doesn't get as many spins in the Hazeborg household as Unfold the Future, Space Revolver, Stardust or Retropolis, it's still something I happily return to from time to time. It's one of their most accessible records to be sure, packed to the brim with hooks, and it might be a good place to start your journey into the Garden of Dreams from. But the more dyed-in-the-wool progheads might demand something a little more complex from this band. The next album will give these people just what they want…

Before that, though, we will examine just how well the songs from Paradox Hotel made the transfer to a live setting as we discuss a live document that holds particular personal value for me. Next week is when I'm going to blow your mind.

RATING: Three footballs and half a cat out of Close To The Edge

CHURCH ORGAN COUNT: A bit on “Pioneers of Aviation”.

BETTER SINGLE-ALBUM VERSION:
Paradox Hotel
Jealousy
Touch My Heaven
Pioneers of Aviation
Selfconsuming Fire
The Unorthodox Dancing Lesson
Life Will Kill You
What if God is Alone
Mommy Leave A Light On
End On A High Note

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