TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Here's A Concept Album Worth The Time, Attention

ADVERTISEMENT

By CURTIS ROSS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 27, 2009

It's tempting to praise this Swedish sextet for its ambition alone, releasing a 90-plus minute concept album at a time when sequencing and the notion of the album in general seem to be in danger of dying from disuse.

The fact that "Communion" is actually, you know, good, seems like the icing on the cake.

The cover and booklet photos show stiffly posed models with frozen smiles in everyday settings at office and home. The shots have a scary, too normal look - think of the cover of Led Zeppelin's "Presence" minus the black obelisk. The artwork foreshadows the themes of alienation within the grooves.

Dreary, though, this is not. The Soundtrack of Our Lives avoid just about all the hyphen-rock cliches to create something that's big and bold without being grandiose, and intelligent without forgetting how to rock.

Lead single "Mensa's Marauders," 143 seconds of just-contained rage, confirms that the band can compress its ideas into bite-size portions. The beauty of "Communion" is that the band just happens to have a lot of worthy ideas.

The album's scale, though, likely is going to be off-putting for listeners weaned on the shuffle function. There's not a clunker here, but neither are there standouts. This is an album, meant to be listened to as such, and not compatible with an a la carte approach.

Besides, pick the disc apart and it's too easy to, well, pick it apart. "I killed myself today" would surely rank as one of the worst ever opening lines were the song it introduces, "Second Life Replay," not so close to perfect, and singer Ebbot Lundberg's delivery so heartbreakingly spot on.

This is one to sit back with, headphones on, lights out. Kids, grow an attention span.

Download this: Did you read the review?! (Oh, all right, "Mensa's Marauders")

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT