Echolyn - Cowboy Poems Free

Home Artist links Label link

Artist:	Echolyn
Title:	Cowboy Poems Free
Label:	Velveteen Records VR 2006-2
Length(s):	59 minutes
Year(s) of release:	2000
Month of review:	09/2000

Line up

Christopher Buzby - keyboards, backing vocals
Brett Kull - guitars, lead and backing vocals
Jordan Perlson - drums and percussion
Paul Ramsey - drums and percussion
Raymond Weston - bass, lead and backing vocals

Tracks

1)	Texas Dust	5.16
2)	Poem #1	1.33
3)	Human Lottery	5.32
4)	Gray Flannel Suits	4.47
5)	Poem #2	0.59
6)	High As Pride	6.45
7)	American Vacation Tune	5.18
8)	Swingin' The Ax	3.15
9)	1729 Broadway	6.01
10)	Poem #3	1.50
11)	67 Degrees	5.21
12)	Brittany	6.34
13)	Poem #4	1.30
14)	Too Late For Everything	4.33

Summary

After a 5 year gap Echolyn, the great white hope of American prog is back. Older and bolder (or should I say balder?) they return to the fore with a new album on their own label.

The music

Texas Dust opens this album. The song opens bombastically, but turns out to be a rather relaxing piece of harmony prog. Subtle instrumentation and arrangements with on the whole a "sunny summer day" feeling to the song. The final part is quite loud with good interplay and a coherent sound with a strong keyboard presence and great intricate percussion. A great driving song. The problem I had with As The World was that there was too little variation. On this album the band has included a number of free form ambientish pieces under the collective name of Poem #?. Atmospheric music, not all sweet really, it may remind some of Not Drowning Waving. The groove breaks loose in Human Lottery. This time Ray Weston takes the lead with a typical Echolyn chorus: harmonies inspired by Gentle Giant, but recognizably Echolyn nonetheless. In this sense I thikn Echolyn has more of a distinctive own sound than say Spocks Beard. Organ and psychedelic guitar dominate the solo's in the middle after which we get some dreamy vocals and a Hawaiian interlude (based on the same melody) with playful percussion. Gray Flannel Suits is tongue-in-cheek piece that is hard not to singalong with. Usually I'm not into this kind of thing, but the band does it so well and with plenty of melodic variation as well (as for instance in the bridge, later repeated in a vocoded way) ending with an avenging organ. High As Pride means taking some gas back. Some Portishead influences here because of the typical soft percussion with a kind of "old" sound. A sad ballad (not a love ballad though) with some weird instruments there: table organ and like on Human Lottery a lap steel guitar. Slow moving, but in a way moving as well. The guitar has something echoes of the wailing guitar sound of Derek And The Dominoes' Layla giving the song some of its atmosphere. American Vacation Tune takes us halfway the record with plenty of rhythmic variation in the opening. For the rest antother one of those catchy Echolyn tracks with a melody in there that reminds me of Genesis' Trick Of The Tail. The next one up is the somewhat aggressively sung Swingin' The Ax (by Ray Weston) with noisy guitars in the back and a jazzy sound in the keys department. Halfway the pace goes up a bit, to get back down to the original pace. A bit of an oddball track. 729 Broadway is a sad track with some sax in there and again a typical Portishead feel to the song: old movies like sounding in black and white. Later on the music may have some more rock in there, but the overall feel is still there. Very moody. After the third Poem, quite melodic, we go to 67 Degrees, which opens with wavery keyboards. The song itself has plenty of mood changes in it, going from mellow passages (coming a bit in waves) to more involved harmonies. Brittany opens with sitar(or is that the Indian banjo?), but then goes into an organ passage (of which we have quite a few on this record). Like many of the aforegoing tracks the music has a soft-loud alternation, usually the chorus being the loud part. One of the vocal parts is really quite aggressive, doubled with more ordinarily sung vocals. This is in fact the part I like best about this track. After the last Poem (slightly in the style of King Crimson, because of the loops, and this time with vocals) the band closes shop with Too Late For Everything. A moody, melancholy track with quite a lot of wind instruments.

Conclusion

A great album. Very mature and clear sounding and contrary to As The World I have no problem getting through this one: notwithstanding the typical trade marks of the band, they have now incorporated many more influences for a broader pallet and I hope also broader appeal. It is not easy coming back after all this time, having been known as one of the groundbreakers of the nineties, but there's no deception here: great songwriting, great singing (as always). No epics on this one, but who needs them if the music comes packaged and played in such a way.