It's been four long years since we had any news from the Norwegian band Soup and the release in June 2021 of the first eponymous album of Giant Sky, a new band formed by Erlend Aastad Viken, the man thanks to whom Soup was born, could let us think that the magnificent "Remedies" had been the swan song. The release of Soup's seventh album "Visions" at the end of the same year is then a good surprise.
A good surprise... not so sure if we read the long list of thanks in the form of epitaph which accompanies this opus and which ends by a "it was a beautiful adventure" resounding like an end. So it is advisable to savor what will perhaps be the last album of Soup as it should be.
Because the Norwegians offer us once again a beautiful record, faithful to the easily recognizable style that they established eighteen years ago. Certainly the slow crescendos beginning pianissimo to finish in wall of sounds with saturated guitars do not surprise any more, but it is always as well done and Soup has the intelligence not to abuse it. The melodies with an elegiac grace and Erlend Aastad Viken's poignant vocals are traps in which the listener is quickly caught, fascinated like a sailor hearing the sirens' song.
The album gives pride of place to long instrumental parts on which the keyboards and guitars, frequently acoustic, are accompanied by a trio of violin/flute/trumpet officiating in Giant Sky and bringing a surplus of melancholy to a record that was already strongly impregnated with it. The pastoral atmosphere which nimbs 'Crystalline' or 'Kingdom of Color' refers to the first Genesis ('Stagnation', 'Harlequin'). The long soaring introduction of 'Burning Bridges' (whose central part is the only uninspired passage of the album) irresistibly evokes a certain 'Shine on You, Crazy Diamond', as well as the final guitar solo of 'Skins Part 3' can only make one think of the guitarist of Pink Floyd.
But these are only pastel shades brought to a set that has its own personality. Soup does Soup, without taking many risks perhaps, but delivers a new (and maybe last) time a magnificent record with melodies more beautiful and moving than the others.