Haze is a band that has been around for a long time and one of the forerunners of what we nowadays label as neo prog. In the late seventies and early eighties, the band was founded by the brothers Chris and Paul McMahon and despite the label neo prog they still managed to distinguish themselves by incorporating a good portion of folk into their music. Over the years, the band has endured the necessary personnel changes and as from 1988 there was not a lot of activity for a long time. In 2020 the latest album Back To The Bones was released and now there is successor The Water's Edge. So it is not very surprising that Haze comes with a new album and again we can say that it has become a family affair because in addition to the two brothers, there is also a son participating. The question that then arises is, of course: how does the new material relate to the oeuvre so far? I can be quite brief about that, the typical Haze sound is still there and the new work fits seamlessly with their previous albums. The mix of prog and folk has remained, the English humour and the vocals are as usual, except for a contribution by Charlie Bramald (Ghost Of the Machine, Nova Cascade). Fortunately, this sympathetic singer is popping up more and more often and that is certainly because of his beautiful, appealing vocal abilities. The Water's Edge is a long album and contains nine tracks that often have a decent length and that means, as always, room for instrumental pieces that alternate the rather specific vocals. Those vocals, that's one thing, you have to love them because it's quite a special voice of Paul McMahon. Catrin Ashston plays violin and flute but also takes care of the female vocals because there is also quite a lot of polyphonic singing. Opener Flight Behaviour immediately shows the characteristic sound with a light oriental sauce and is a blueprint for the rest of the album and so we hear a song that reminds us of Jethro Tull. This is a comparison that is of course quickly made, especially because of the amount of flute we hear. Quiet tracks like Waters Rising about the rising water level on our globe are interspersed with more rocky tracks like Not alone. With more than eleven minutes, The Outlandish Knight is a track about a knight who deceives many women and contains everything Haze has to offer with solos on guitar, keys and it rocks out here and there. The dreamy middle part is beautiful and contains a wonderfully dragging guitar solo before the finale rocks this song again. The beautiful harmony vocals make the quiet and especially acoustic Belong a well-chosen resting point. The bluesy Drinking With The Devil contains a lot of gritty guitar work and solos on saxophone and Hammond organ and could have come straight out of the sixties. The beautiful Who Goes There? is one of my favourite tracks on The Water's Edge in which the guitar work stands out for its nice solos, the tempo is middle paced and does show that typical British prog. Parasite is a slightly mysterious song with distorted vocals and a somewhat creepy atmosphere, different again and yet Haze. This album deserves a worthy finale and gets it with the wonderful Redemption which is really a full-blooded neo-prog song with very appealing guitar work on a thick layer of keys. Nice. Apart from the regular album, I got download performances of a number of extra songs that don't add much to me. Two alternative versions of songs from the album that I certainly don't think are better than the standard version. The almost fifteen minutes long Changes In Time is nice but no more than that and that also applies to the acoustic detail of Belong. All in all, Haze has made a very consistent and high-quality album which is their best to date for me and is certainly more proggy than for example the last albums of Jethro Tull. In my appreciation I have left the extra tracks out of consideration. . ***+ Erik Fraanje (edited by Dave Smith) Where to buy? |
