Hailing from Scotland, Long Earth, is a five-piece prog rock band displaying musical influences from prog, rock and sometimes pop from the seventies, eighties, and nineties. An Ordinary Life is Long Earth's third album - I must confess that I do not know their first two albums The Source (2017) and Once Around The Sun (2020, see review) - and it is a concept album about life, what it means in general for us. The album kicks off with an epic track called Fight The Hand That Bleeds You and that one, clocking just over the ten minutes mark, is a great start for this album, featuring beautiful soaring guitars, melodic vocals and memorable hooks which sometimes remind me of Pendragon. Follow ups Morpheus and Life I are both ballads and the latter rather sounds like a pop song packed with synthesizers. Luckily with Sand the tempo goes up again and this one is probably the most rhythmic song of the entire album, and it also stands out due to the excellent guitar solo. Shadows, being the longest song of the album, is again rather ballad-like and it is also a quite emotional and atmospheric track with a bombastic prog rock finale. Moscow is my favourite song, as it is a true and pure symphonic prog rock song packed with swirling keys, melodic guitar parts and everything that this kind of song needs indeed. Life III- Empty Shore, a track about old age, ends this great album in a rather mediocre way, as it is a rather average song indeed. Overall Long Earth's third album is a more than average prog rock album, a true grower, so the more you listen to it the better it gets indeed. Listening tip: Moscow ***+ Martien Koolen (edited by Tracy van Os van den Abeelen) Where to buy? |
