PENDRAGON — Men Who Climb Mountains (review)

PENDRAGON — Men Who Climb Mountains album cover Album · 2014 · Non-Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Warthur
Whilst Pendragon's Passion was - true to the title - an emotive and cathartic album, to the point where on repeated listens its grumpiness (and latching-on to tired political talking points) turned me off.

By comparison, Men Who Climb Mountain finds the band in a somewhat more contemplative mode. It seems to have been constructed as a showcase for Nick Barrett's guitar playing in particular; those who have listened carefully to Pendragon over the years already know that Nick is capable of evoking great emotion with his playing, on a par with peers like Marillion's Steve Rothery and inspirations like Camel's Andy Latimer, and he's very much the featured player here.

Some editions of the album include a bonus disc of a solo appearance by Nick, playing an acoustic set at a friend's pub as a favour. We've had acoustic releases from Pendragon before - the Acoustically Challenged album, for instance - and it's usually had a rather transformative effect on their music, steeped as it usually is in Clive Nolan's lush keyboards and electric guitar performances from Nick.

Here, however, whilst there's no Men Who Climb Mountains material in the acoustic set itself, you don't really miss it - because translating it to an acoustic format would not necessarily change that much, since an acoustic-sounding guitar style is so prominent on so much of the album anyway. It's an interesting shift towards a gentler style after two albums of harder-rocking, darker material, and proof that the journey of constant development, reinvention, and progress that the band have been on since they said farewell to their well-honed 1990s style on Not Of This World continues. At the same time, the almost singer-songwriter qualities of the album does lead to issues - Nick's vocal style has never been what I'd call versatile, and he seems to try out a few too many experiments here where his voice is trying to carry the song and it just doesn't quite manage it.
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