The Flower Kings, Chapter 12: Desolation Rose

12) Desolation Rose (2013)

That's how the story ends...

So here it is, the last album by The Flower Kings. We've come a long way, haven't we? Don't bring out your handkerchiefs just yet, I'll do another one after this to wrap it all up. Today, we will focus on one of the strangest birds in the entire back catalog of The Flower Kings, an album that is so unlike all other TFK-albums that I have trouble believing it's even the same band.

True to form, Roine dropped Desolation Rose only a year after the last album. As is custom by now, the reactions ran the gamut from rapturous applause to outright dismissal. And it's no wonder. This is a weird one. To make a “darker” album is one thing; to make a “darker” album while lightness and optimism are the band's trademark is quite another. The all-work-no-play ethic of the last album is driven to the absolute extreme here.

In fact, for the longest time I didn't like this album at al. No, that's not the right word. I didn't get it, the same way I don't get modern hip-hop, for instance. That's a different feeling. Listening to it felt like work. I was dreading the time to review it, so I went and listened to it many times, forcing myself to like it, or at least to find something in it. Don't misunderstand me: I'm under no obligation to be nice when I don't like something, but I am under the obligation to be fair.

I'm happy to say I've at least partially succeeded. One of the things about this album: it should be played loud. It's not big on subtlety. It's big on drive and riff and hook, but not subtlety. It's not background noise: you have listen with your full attention. The other thing is that it should be consumed as a whole.

I remember Roine saying once that he wasn't really interested in making a TFK concept album. It therefore took me a while to realize that Desolation Rose is a concept album of sorts: there is a thematic line running through the album, songs flow into each other and the album reprises riffs, themes, lyrics and catchphrases up the wazoo. At the same time, the album is built around short, snappy, punchy songs with verses and choruses, with only the first song clocking in at over ten minutes. The focus lies overwhelmingly on vocal tracks and sung material – extended instrumental sections, while not absent, are pushed to the margins of the album. This album is wordy. It has a point to make.

I've never paid too much attention to The Flower Kings lyrics. I'm just more of a music guy than a lyrics guy. Every so often, Roine will pull a nice, clever, quotable lyric out of his hat, but most of the time, it's the kind of vaguely uplifting, spiritual but not-quite-religious, inoffensively opaque but not Yes-level incomprehensible stuff that complements the music perfectly well (or, at the very least, isn't in the way of the music).

Things are different this time around. Desolation Rose is all business. Roine is taking a more overtly political path. It's basically an album-long rant about haywire consumerism, government corruption, rising populism and the surveillance state. This isn't an entirely new thing for Roine – Banks of Eden was much the same, and other, older material has shades of this, as did Wall Street Voodoo – but this is the first time he's really built an album around a particular subject. In this way he's anticipated the current trend in prog circles of the politically-conscious protest album, as examplified in Marillion's FEAR and The Tangent's The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery (both of which I love, incidentally). Roine never gets too specific about just who or what he's taking aim at, but we're smart enough to fill in the blanks.

I must also add that this is one of TFK's most collaborative efforts; many songs are credited as full-band compositions. Musically, the music is much less Yes and much more King Crimson, Red era. The first track, “Tower ONE”, is a statement of intent like “Numbers” was before it. It's the longest track by far and the one that will immediately grab your attention. It's a bit of a microcosm of all that's going on in this album: it's brash and hard-edged but also quite catchy. It has the same density and richness of musical ideas as any long TFK track, but a much more relentless pace and little room to breathe. It's a demanding but ultimately very rewarding piece of music; it all comes together quite beautifully at the end.

The rest of the songs are much shorter, but should be seen as a continuum of pieces that flow into one another. “Sleeping Bones”, for instance, doesn't seem like much but does introduce some lyrics and riffs that get reprised elsewhere. The same goes for “Desolation Road”, which more or less introduces what will the “chorus” for the entire album.

This is not what the song is about.

The Reingold-led “White Tuxedos” is more of a song in its own right, and it's a corker. It starts as a cool, dark bluesy piece with those creepily distorted Roine vocals again, the chorus is instantly recognizable and the song goes completely berserk at the end. Roine plays one of his maddest and meanest guitar solos and Felix Lehrmann batters the hell out of it. This might be the most pitch-dark song The Flower Kings ever wrote – if the sound clips from old Tricky Dick didn't clue you in, what if I told you “white tuxedo” is a euphemism for body bag? There's a perverse joy to be had in hearing kindly old Roine Stolt spit out lyrics like “You black-hearted bastards!”

“The Resurrected Judas” is one of the few songs where The Flower Kings allow themselves some room to breathe and stretch out. This song plays out in a more subdued, relaxed vibe but also contains one of this album's few extended, triumphant instrumental workouts, which is quite welcome. Mellotrons and church organs aplenty, this is the song that sounds the most like vintage TFK.

“The Silent Masses”, by contrast, is all vocals. It's a verse-chorus song with a brisk pace and more than one nod to The Beatles. Hasse Fröberg sounds raspier than usual – I don't know if his voice developed a rougher edge or if it was a deliberate choice for him to sing like this. We're past the halfway mark so we're alredy hearing reprises of previously introduced themes and lines.

My favourite song on the album is “Last Carnivore”. This is where I feel the band succeeds the best at what they are trying to achieve with this album. It's got a great drive, the lyrics are on point, it's catchy as all hell and the brooding atmosphere works in its favour. Despite its length it's quite a full, busy song with a lot of tempo changes, but it's very organic and, despite everything, it manages to be quite beautiful.

“Dark Fascist Skies” might go a little overboard with the darkness; this one teeters on the edge of trying too hard. It's still an important song for the album as it brings a lot of themes together. We get another crazy guitar solo at the middle-eight, and Lehrmann once again proves himself to be excactly the kind of drummer that this album needs. He injects a lot of energy into the songs.

The two-pronged finale of Desolation Rose is proving the toughest for me to digest. “Blood of Eden”, completely out of the blue, turns out to be a positive and uplifting song. I get it; it's supposed to be that ray of hope at the end. But it feels a little tacked-on and unearned. This doesn't sound like the kind of thing the band was working towards. Despite its bombastic nature, it feels lightweight and inconsequential. Also, one names a song after a beloved Peter Gabriel song at one's own peril. “Silent Graveyards”, then, is one more short reprise of the “Desolation Road” chorus, that feels less like a grand finale than an afterthought. That's too bad, because I like the idea of an entire mighty choir (containing a host of familiar names) singing the reprise. The album ends with a rather brutal scream from Hasse Fröberg, subverting the happy ending given to us by “Blood of Eden”. There probably was a good way to wrap this concept album up in a suitably epic style, whether hopeful or bleak. This isn't it.

Any saviours here?

I've spoken in the past of the way The Flower Kings evolved from their first album on. How the songs became more focused, how more emphasis was placed on vocal tracks instead of instrumental tracks, how the albums became darker and, eventually, shorter. Desolation Rose feels like the ultimate culmination of all that, the logical conclusion to a natural process of evolution and therefore perhaps the most obvious end point for The Flower Kings. Desolation Rose is radical to the point that it really feels like a different band now.

There's much to like about Desolation Rose and even more to admire, but I must admit that it leaves me feeling a little empty. I have gained a better understanding of what this album is and what it is tryting to accomplish, and many of the tracks have really grown on me. It's just that the whole falls just short of being more than the sum of its parts, which, as a concept album, it really needs to be. This mostly has to do with the two ending tracks; if those were just a little more organic, flowed just a little more logically from what came before it, had just a little more substance, we might have had a real gem on our hands. As it stands, we've got a mostly great album that ends on a damp squib. I must therefore conclude that the last album by The Flower Kings is something that I respect rather than love.

But I'll be darned if this is the note I end my retrospective series on, so join me next week as we wrap this up properly!

RATING: Billions and billions of blistering barnacles.

CHURCH ORGAN COUNT: Once, at the end of “The Resurrected Judas”, giving all Judas songs a perfect 3/3 church organ score!

BETTER 50 MINUTE VERSION: Not Applicable. This album needs to be listened to as-is.

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