Stardust We Are (1997)Tomas Bodin - keyboards
Hans Bruniusson - percussion
Hans Fröberg - vocals
Jaime Salazar - drums
Michael Stolt - bass guitar
Roine Stolt - vocals, guitars, keyboards, bass guitar
Ulf Wallander - soprano saxophone
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Disc 1:
1. "In The Eyes Of The World"
2. "A Room With A View" (Tomas Bodin)
3. "Just This Once"
4. "Church Of Your Heart"
5. "Poor Mr. Rain's Ordinary Guitar"
6. "The Man Who Walked With Kings"
7. "Circus Brimstone" (Bodin, Stolt)
8. "Crying Clown" (Bodin)
9. "Compassion"
Disc 2:
1. "Pipes Of Peace" (Bodin, Stolt)
2. "The End Of Innocence"
3. "The Merrygoround"
4. "Don Of The Universe"
5. "A Day At The Mall" (Bodin)
6. "Different People"
7. "Kingdom Of Lies" (Bodin, Stolt)
8. "If 28"
9. "Ghost Of The Red Cloud"
10. "Hotel Nirvana"
11. "Stardust We Are"
(all songs written and composed by Roine Stolt, except where noted)
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Now we are on to Stardust We Are, the band's third album and their first double album. I have to admit that this album was a difficult one to tackle at first, and I'll admit I didn't get very far the first times when trying. In the Eyes of the World was pretty good, but the ambience of A Room with a View threw me a bit, and the beginning of Just This Once was just so strange, that I took the "Okay, back to the Flower Kings stuff I like already" approach.
But, while it still took a few more listens to grasp the scope and enormity of it all, it being an album that contains around 130 minutes of music, once I gave the whole thing my full attention, its overall greatness came just oozing out, song by song, listen by listen. Each listen revealed new layers, helped me discover a great song that had previously hadn't grabbed me, etc.
In many ways, this is their most cohesive double album to date, as several melodies from the title track that ends the record are found dotted all over the album, while the flow, as is customary with a Flower Kings record, is just tremendous. Interestingly, despite the cohesiveness of the overall record, the two separate discs do have their own identity, and that only adds to how good and epic it is overall.
Of particular note is Kingdom of Lies, which is the first FK song on record where Hasse Froberg sings the lead vocals on the entire song. And he does a great job on that song, as he also does with the "Stardust we are" section in the title track. But Roine is still the lead vocalist on just about everything else on the record, and as always, his vocals are right on point.
And continuing the early theme of having a lot of instrumentals and transitional songs, 10 of the 20 songs are instrumentals (or 11 of 21 if you count the latter half of Compassion, which is more of a hidden track than part of the actual Compassion song), many of them being of the shorter, transitional nature. But the full-length ones, like Circus Brimstone, Don of the Universe and The Man Who Walked with Kings, are all tremendous and some of their best ones ever.
I've sort of neglected Tomas Bodin in my write-ups thus far, not purposely, but I probably get so caught up in talking about other things, that I probably take his greatness for granted and figure it goes without saying, but that is not fair. He deserves to be talked about as one of the all-time great prog rock keyboard players. A shining example of his awesome piano playing is the last three minutes of The End of Innocence. Those sad notes he plays underneath that final chorus leave me shaking my head in amazement every time I hear that song. To me, he is similar to Genesis' Tony Banks in that he rarely dazzles you with technical wizardry, even though he is capable of it, while blowing your mind with understated playing that fits the song perfectly to where you can't imagine the song without his contributions. Roine Stolt is obviously the band's MVP, but Bodin is in 2nd place by a strong margin, and it's no coincidence that many of their best songs, including many on this album, are built around a memorable keyboard melody.
Other personal favorites of mine from this record are Ghost of the Red Cloud, Different People and The Merrygoround. But really, everything on this record is aces, and while it can be a chore to get through an album this long in one sitting, on the rare occasions when I do, it is an absolute thrill.