SPOCK'S BEARD — Day for Night (review)

SPOCK'S BEARD — Day for Night album cover Album · 1999 · Metal Related Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Warthur
On their previous album, The Kindness of Strangers, Spock's Beard had tried to find the precarious balancing point between their prog instincts and broader accessibility. On Day For Night, they hit the sweet spot - producing an album which at once sounds up-to-date and modern (for the time it game out) whilst at the same time showing as much influence from 1960s sunshine pop and 1970s power pop as it does from prog.

You could, perhaps, interpret the approach they take here as answering the question "what if prog had emerged from the West Coast psych-pop scene of the Byrds and the Beach Boys, rather than the UK underground scene haunted by the likes of Pink Floyd and Soft Machine?" - there's a certain 1960s sunniness to proceedings here which means that, whilst the band's centre of gravity is in undeniably prog territory, there's a certain openness and immediate appeal to the music here.

Whilst much of the music on here isn't necessarily enormously complex by itself, the sheer range of styles the band touch on over the running time - from sunny tranquility to foreboding heaviness - means that there's lots of ground covered, and whilst the individual bits might vary in complexity from refreshingly direct and simple to subtly intricate, the compositional complexity is rather cleverly handled.

The end result is an album which is simultaneously jauntily radio-friendly and at the same still satisfying from a prog perspective, as well as having a sound to it which is distinctly the band's own. It's on the one hand an album I'd have no qualms about handing to someone who hasn't previously heard much prog who wanted to hear what Spock's Beard was all about, but at the same time should keep many prog fans happy.
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