#298 Premiata Forneria Marconi - Photos of Ghosts

Mentioned in the Allmusic guide as a golden age prog album of note. And here I thought I'd heard just about everyone out there.

Wow, these guy have heard them some Genesis. I know that Genesis was unusually popular in Italy, and generally were influential, but these guys really specifically have the early The Knife / Watcher of the Skies, jammier Genesis sound down. The particular guitar and organ sounds, the guitar arpeggios, the stop-start moves, the build-and-recede 9-minute structures - they don't just sound like any prog band, they sound very much like Genesis in particular.

Now, Genesis remains my favorite prog band of all time, so do these guys work effectively with that sound I'm so found of? Mostly. The good news is, these guys really nail the jammiest, rave-upiest bits of the Genesis thing, and don't bother with the wispy folksiness that sometimes tries my patience. Its all arpeggios and energy and full speed ahead - sounds like Genesis, paced like Rush.

As you might have guessed though, that's also the bad news. There's a saying in film that nothing is as boring as constant action, and the same basic principle applies here. Genesis knew that complex runs and jams only worked if they created contrast, if they were earned and portioned out and used to create interest piquing peaks. Too many prog albums are like Michael Bay movies, just charging at you with time changes and runs and dueling solos over and over and over again unrelentingly, and this album kind of falls into that category. There's not many memorable hooks that really rise above the masses, and the vocals are mostly in English, but are delivered awkwardly and forgettably, so it all becomes a bit of a mush.

There's an interesting parallel to my previous review here: Colouring of Pigeons was so joyous because it wasn't lost in a sea of similarly massive swooping and keening songs.

All this theory aside, the particular actual music, when you pull it out, is pretty good - its interesting as long as you have the energy to listen to it closely, and there are interesting, interlocking moves about every 30 seconds or so.

Maybe I'm just tired lately. All these albums that I think are just too exhausting. Well, this is the time, and this is the record of the time. As with so many recent listens, this one falls roughly in the middle, though at least on the high end with what I'm gonna call a 3.5/5