[Music] The Tangent - Not As Good As the Book

[Nick]

Reviewed By: Nicholas R. Andreas
Artist: The Tangent
Album: Not as Good as the Book
Genre: Progressive Rock
Year of Release: 2008
On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Not-As-Good-Book/dp/B0010WZTLW/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1211147981&sr=8-1

Not as good as the previous effort. A band like The Tangent, like their close brother, The Flower Kings, often manage to make something good, while rarely making something truly amazing. For whatever reason it seems that even though these bands have pioneered a very unique sound, they don’t seem to be able to use it to its fullest extent. The exception for me is The Flower Kings’ Paradox Hotel. That album seems to be able to push the trademark sound of Swedish Progressive Rock to the limit in order to produce a fantastic album. So at the end of the day I’d approach the album at hand in one of two ways. If you are familiar with The Flower Kings, or The Tangent, expect a good, but not brilliant continuation of the sound you already know and love. However if you are not familiar with either band, this album does have the potential to be mind-blowing simply because of how well it is able to meander back and forth between traditional and unique progressive rock.

The two disc set opens with “A Crisis in Mid-Life”, which documents one of the key elements of this bands sound. No matter what the lyrical content, the music is going to be upbeat and positive. I swear this band could put a smile on my face if they were singing about the holocaust. That said it is musically the best song in the set. Great use of keyboards and intermingled guitar support the vocals of Andy Tillson as he pushes the song through. At first the vocals through the chorus stood out a bit as annoying, but on several listens I think they really blend into the song nicely. Up next is “Lost in London 25 Years Later”. A step down from its predecessor, it’s interesting at times, as I can say for almost the entire album, however it often wonders places I seemingly have no reason to follow it to. I can say the same thing about the next track, which happens to be the longest on disc one, “The Ethernet”. The next song is the albums only instrumental track, “Celebrity Puree”. The shortest track on the album one might think it naturally be my favorite as the rest of the album can drag at times. However the opposite is probably true, some of the keyboard tones and instrument usage annoys me to no end, and the song seems to somehow wander to much even in the short duration.

The title track tends to bring things back up to form for me however. I think vocals really help give the music on the disc direction and adhesion, and this track is certainly a great example of that. However the very spacey middle section does tend to go on a bit too long. But at least when it ends and picks up with acoustic guitar and goes into the final block of the song it, you forget in current enjoyment how long you had to wait. “A Sale of Two Souls” is typical of the rest of the album, enjoyable, interesting, just not overly great. I really don’t think I can say anything other than that for the final cut on disc one, “Bat out of Basildon”.

The second disc simple contains two epics clocking in at just over twenty minutes each. The first is “Four Eggs, One War” and is certainly a high point of the album. Several extra vocalists bring a lot of needed variation to the sound, and in general the song somehow manages to keep my attention longer than any other, despite being the longest. I do think the massive amount of lyrics that fill the long song certainly helps once again in bringing direction to the song. A beautiful job is done throughout, in every aspect. The final piece on the album is “The Full Gamut”, and it unfortunately fails to deliver as powerful a punch as the previous track. Also it should be noted that for whatever reason, the lyrics for this track are completely excluded from the booklet. All that aside, it’s one of the better songs on the album. Like the previous track, despite its length, it tends to keep its direction and focus a lot better than a lot of the tracks on disc one. With the exception of the primary instrumental passage (Can’t this album do anything logically?) I’d even say this song has some of the strongest music on the album.

 All in all, this album would be a cool experience for someone who isn’t familiar with this type of album. Lots of instruments to take in, cool arrangements, and all around cool sound. However as someone already introduced to this type of music it really fell short of amazing me. I’d much rather listen to their previous album, A Place in the Queue, or simply listen to the better The Flower Kings discs than give this too many repeated listens. Certainly not the place to come if you’re the progressive music fan looking for insane musicianship, as this is much more in the vein of mood music than anything else. If I’m in the mood for it I can really enjoy this set, however if I’m not it can tend to bore me, or just leave me wishing it was at that next step of greatness.

Nick’s Rating: 7/10