MOON SAFARI: [ Blomljud ] (PROGRESSIVE ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

After a first initiatory journey to find the entrance to summer, the 5 Swedish guys of Moon Safari come back with a second album with a substantial menu. Indeed, this "Blomljud" displays its 101 minutes on 2 CDs, which can let us fear a certain weariness for the listener stuffed with too much sound information or the disinterest due to a too diluted subject.

A small intro ("Constant Bloom") in capella confirms the vocal qualities exploited in the first album and this chorus with 4 or 5 voices is not without reminding the lyric impulses of Queen or the harmonies of Manathan Transfert. Without giving time to the emotion to go down, the band proceeds with the longest track of the first CD, "Methuselah's Children" which throughout nearly 16 minutes will give a glimpse of everything that will be the heart of this album. The vocal richness due to the multiplicity of the interpreters (4 of the 5 musicians are credited to the singing) rests on a framework of cheerful melodies heightened by numerous solo interventions of the guitars and the keyboards, sometimes acoustic, sometimes electric. After a soft start with the piano, which is quickly joined by an aerial synth, the drums come to mark a more sustained rhythm on which the chords of the acoustic guitar will come to rest. After a break where the voices and the piano are intermingled, reminding us again of Queen ("A Night At The Opera"), it is the piano which assures the rhythmic until a comeback on the initial theme of the track. The finale allows us to hear distinctly for the first time a small electric guitar solo.

Then follows the 9 minutes instrumental of "Moonwalk" with its sequences of slow and fast passages and its multiple and enchanting soli. "Bluebells" will remind to many people the vocal harmonies of Crosby, Stills and Nash (eventually and Young) at Woodstock ("Suite Judy Blue Eyes") and the Dobro-like folk guitar that opens "Yasgur's Farm" and then the fiddle of the very 'giguesque' "Lady Of The Woodland" will certainly make their effect. Without forgetting the presence of "The Other Half Of The Sky", only because this title spreads over nearly 32 minutes a wave of melodies and an avalanche of very harmonic sounds.

Moon Safari confirms on this "Blomljud" the potential seen in "A Doorway To Summer". The vocal richness is still magnified by the 4 voices which often mix, support each other, sometimes answer or shift as in the final canon of "In The Countryside". The musical arrangements are of an outstanding quality: despite the great number of instruments involved, the sound is always of an impressive clarity. There is in this album a kind of cohesion, of unity of musical coloring which makes that, in spite of the duration of the whole album , we aren't weary of it. A beautiful success ! - Official website

MOON SAFARI

[ BLOMLJUD ]

AUTRE LABEL

PROGRESSIVE ROCK