Band Profile - TITAN

Titan - A Raining Sun of Light and Love and Sweet Dreams
I read about the band Yes long before I ever actually heard their music. They were built up in print as musical geniuses. I read about mindbending progressive rock, with experimental soundscapes and touches of classical music influence. I was intrigued, and imagined the sound was like the rock bands I had already heard, visceral and exciting, only smarter somehow. But when I actually heard a Yes album, disappointment set in. It was not like the rock bands I knew. The excitement had been bled out of the sound to allow room for noodling that bordered on the dainty. At the time, it sounded to me like they were the kind of "rock" musicians who owned tight leggings and puffy shirts, and though I would eventually appreciate their efforts more, that image has always stuck with me.

The point is that Brooklyn stoner/prog band Titan is what I always wanted Yes to sound like. They craft fifteen minute long slabs of driving, exciting prog rock, and never does it sound like they might be wearing capes of any kind. True, the beginning of their 2007 album A Raining Sun of Light and Love does begin with a brief fingerpicked guitar passage and some odd vocals, which represents their nearest approach to the Renaissance Faire style of prog material. But even that bit is quickly taken over by echo and delay effects until the sound completely decays and, in an introduction to Titan's take on prog rock, you are launched full force into space by muscular guitar and Hammond organ over a driving beat. With A Raining Sun of Light and Love, Titan manages to make sprawling prog epics sound energized and vital, like you are traveling at extremely high speeds over bizarre and unfamiliar terrains, which is no small accomplishment considering that their albums are largely instrumental.

Titan's follow up effort was 2010's Sweet Dreams, which is a more manic affair overall. The virtuosity is ramped up on this release, with the guitars, bass, and organ moving in and out of sync above the jazzier, though no less propulsive drumming. The difference between the two is that while A Raining Sun of Light and Love pushes you along, Sweet Dreams tends to pull you apart. You find your attention racing in so many different directions that the effect can be dizzying. The mostly instrumental quality again does Titan many favors, though to their credit, when they do bring in some vocals (as they briefly do on "A Wooded Altar Beyond the Wander"), they manage to eschew the high-register singing and frankly embarrassing lyrical content that prog bands tend to utilize with baffling regularity. Titan lets their music tell the story, which of course will be different for each listener.

Listening to Titan, I find myself wishing that I could take their entire sound and airbrush it onto the side of a 1975 Econoline van. In the end, I imagine that's the greatest seal of approval I could give them.

Can't Stop Thinking Big

Rush - Clockwork Angels
There are a lot of ways to look at a new Rush album, but in the end it boils down to the fact that you have two groups of people who might be interested: Rush Fanboys and Everyone Else, and you have to tailor the review to one of those groups. As a member of Everyone Else, I'll be directing my energies in that direction. People who aren't avid Rush supporters are apt to ignore most of Rush's catalog other than maybe the really memorable releases like 2112 and Moving Pictures, and as such, they'd be largely unaware of the course he band has taken since the late Seventies. Again, I fall into this camp. Unfair, perhaps, but those are the risks you face as a prog band who has been working consistently for over 40 years. The just-released Clockwork Angels is Rush's twentieth LP, though the first single has been floating around the internet for close to two years now. The news surrounding this album's long delayed delivery was what initially brought me to give that early single "Caravan" a listen. I knew what I was expecting from it when I clicked the link on YouTube, but what I heard was somewhat surprising in that it was not embarrassing.

Somehow Rush has sidestepped the pitfalls of being a Seventies prog band in the world of modern rock music. The sound isn't dated. The guitars are thick and heavy, the mix is clear but edgy, and the composition isn't overly wanky or long-winded, but it does show obvious craft and attention to detail. Rush appears to have listened to and learned from the entirety of rock history since their heyday, and yet appear to have kept their individual soul as a band intact as well. They're still Rush, they're just 2012 Rush, which is as much as a person can ask of a band in their position, really.

Clockwork Angels is a good old-fashioned concept album, involving a plot that pits individuality against a totalitarian world with elements of science fiction and steampunk. I'll be honest, I've not fully absorbed the lyrical contributions and put it together as a cohesive story yet, but I'm sure the upcoming novelization of the album (written by sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson) would help with that. I can say, though, that the music is interesting, with some inspired work from guitarist Alex Lifeson, whose and guitar tones and techniques help keep things interesting as the band travels far outside the verse-chorus-verse structure. Geddy Lee's vocals are expressive, but thankfully more understated than you might expect from a prog band, and his bass is further up in the mix than usual, which adds a Tool-esque dimension to the sound in some places. Peart's drums are reliably fascinating; the method of playing while being conducted orchestra-style by the band's producer Nick Raskulinecz has paid off. The musical ability displayed on the record is unassailable, and the only complaint I have is that after a while, things begin to sound a bit formless, but you could maybe chalk that up to the fact that prog is not, by and large, my go-to genre.

Overall, Clockwork Angels is a solid album worth a listen even for those without a serious Rush obsession, but for those with a high tolerance for proggy weirdness, this should be a feast.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA