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"The quality of the three major compositions on this album make Tales From The Lush Attic an essential item in any progressive playlist."
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3/5
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After releasing a mythical and long lost cassette (Seven Stories Into Eight) as well as some rather unnoticed singles, IQ, a British band based on the ashes of The Lens by Mike Holmes and Martin Orford, finally released its first album in 1983. This is the great era of the revival of progressive rock, propelled by Marillion and his "Script For A Jester's Tears", or Pallas. Before "The Wake" established the band's legitimacy and notoriety, "Tales From The Lush Attic" offers us a first approach to the band's music.
More than 25 years after its release, three tracks from this album are still regularly included in IQ en concert set-lists. First of all, there is the monumental and now mythical "The Last Human Gateway", proposed here in a version announced at 21 minutes on the booklet... and which makes only 20 in the end! It doesn't matter. In the tradition of a Marillion, this title proposes three main sections, with multiple themes linked to each other, and which will be part of the group's history over and over again, restructured and cut up! We are dealing here with neo-Prog, with neat arrangements, where the balance between the different instruments and the vocal parts accentuates the pleasure distilled by the catchy melodies.
In the same vein, "The Enemy Smacks" remains one of the band's major standards today. With a little more aggressive guitars, this track often evokes Genesis. But these are only reminiscences, not plagiarism. "Awake And Nervous" finally completes the major trilogy of this first album, with an underlying but never invasive 'genesis' coloration. As for the last two tracks, they are more anecdotal, and in particular track 4 with its short piano solo by Martin Orford!
Beyond a really weak and dated production, where Peter Nicholls' voice is not always well assured (or very accurate, it must be admitted), we may be able to blame the band for its tendency (later corrected) to want to play too quickly, in a kind of haste accentuated by a drumming that sometimes seems to have been inherited from the punk! Nevertheless, the quality of the three major compositions on this album, which will reveal all their richness in future re-interpretations, especially live, make Tales From The Lush Attic an essential item in any progressive playlist. - Official website
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TRACK LISTING:
01. The Last Human Gateway (19:57)
02. Through The Corridors (2:35)
03. Awake And Nervous (7:45)
04. My Baby Treats Me Right ´cos I´m A Hard Lovin´ Man All Night Long (1:45)
05. The Enemy Smacks (13:49)
LINEUP:
Martin Orford: Claviers
Michael Holmes: Guitares
Paul Cook: Batterie
Peter Nicholls: Chant
Tim Esau: Basse
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(0) MIND(S) FROM OUR READERS
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Top of the page
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(1) COMMENT(S)
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READERS
4.5/5 (4 view(s))
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STAFF:
3.4/5 (10 view(s))
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IN RELATION WITH IQ
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OTHER REVIEWS
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OTHER(S) REVIEWS ABOUT IQ
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