2018 no. 2: Roine Stolt

My Favourite Albums of 2018 - Number 2
Roine Stolt  - Manifesto Of An Alchemist
The Flower Kings - Manifesto Of An Alchemist
Roine Stolt's The Flower King - Manifesto Of An Alchemist

Hooray! It's a new Flower Kings album! Except not really. Except... maybe?

Roine Stolt doesn't really care what he works on, as long as he works. Which is how you get things like The Sea Within, a supergroup that probably wasn't as big a sensation as everyone had hoped. The Sea Within's eponymous album appreared pretty much dead in the water, doomed by the news that Daniël Gildenlöw, the most irreplacable man in prog, had already left the band; but even moreso by the news that Roine had got a new touring lineup together for The Flower Kings. And, suddenly, the world knew exactly what it wanted from Roine Stolt, and it wasn't some underachieving supergroup.

Happy to oblige, Roine made a new Flower Kings album in record time, except he kind of didn't? TFK was always a bit of a revolving door band, but the one person who has never been replaced - Tomas Bodin - has now been replaced, which is the only reason I could think of both Roine and InsideOut have been hesitant to put the band name on this record. So now we have to make do with the somewhat unwieldy band name of Roine Stolt's The Flower King. Well, phooey to that. It sounds like a Flower Kings album and that's how I'll treat it.

Happily, Manifesto Of An Alchemist is a bit of a return to the days of yore when The Flower Kings made free-flowing, spontaneous, playful music that was a celebration of all the musc Roine grew up with. At the same time, the album frequently hits with the venom of Desolation Rose, jams like Unfold The Future and occasionally achieves the brilliant complexity of The Sum Of No Evil. It doesn't entirely avoid the pitfalls of earlier TFK work - there's some filler here - but that's part of the package.

Other than that, the most remarkable thing about this album is how unremarkable it is. It's another TFK record. It's not the best, not the worst, but a blend of all of the previous albums. It gives you exactly what you want, and I want me some Flower Kings. It's been five years since the last TFK album, so it's a very welcome treat.