PENDRAGON — The Masquerade Overture (review)

PENDRAGON — The Masquerade Overture album cover

Album · 1996 · Non-Metal

5/5 · 2021-11-16
Warthur

Having hit on their "classic" sound with The World, Pendragon spent the next few albums exploring the different dimensions of that particular album's approach. Whereas The Window of Life had a clear emphasis on the proggier, Pink Floyd-inspired aspects of that approach, The Masquerade Overture to my ears at first seems to lean on the poppier side of Pendragon's sound at the time, though with the passage of time I have come to better appreciate some of the subtleties they work into the mix.

See, it's not that the album is overtly commercial, it's more that it's highly melodic, and in its own way it's got just an ample share of progressive touches of its own; it's just that it also has some really delightful hooks and an (initially) sunny attitude which makes it look smoother than it actually is - a little sugar coating to establish an air of optimism before we get into darker realms as on The Shadow.

No, we certainly aren't dealing with anything as simplistic here as, say, the Red Shoes EP, but the vocal harmonies and comparatively simple musical backing to the vocal passages of the choruses to As Good as Gold or Guardian of My Soul took a while to grow on me. With more time I've gained a better appreciation of the hidden curves and passages sprinkled throughout the album, as well as its overall emotional structure - like more and more details being noticed as you study the delightfully busy cover art.

After reading some interviews with Nick Barrett, I think I've put my finger on why The Masquerade Overture seemed to elude me a little previously - and why, despite the plaudits they won for a while with the revision of their sound over the course of the next three albums or so, this is where I am inclined to get off the Pendragon train. Barrett has gone down on the record as this being the album he wrote when it was beginning to dawn on him that all was not well in his marriage - the doubts beginning to creep in informed the writing of The Shadow, and the trauma of the marriage actually collapsing followed, leaving this as the last Pendragon studio effort until Not Of This World some five years later.

Had this not impacted Nick's music, it would be utterly irrelevant to raise this - and had it not impacted his music, he'd have a heart of stone. As it stands, if you follow the lyrics of subsequent Pendragon releases (and note the personal and political nods he's worked in here and there), there's occasional moments of bitterness which come up here and there, whether this is about the collapse of personal relationships or getting angry about Shariah law or tut-tutting about how kids these days don't read enough books.

Perhaps that was a necessary maturation, but it still means that Pendragon albums after here lack the uncomplicated innocence that the albums prior to this had - and it was that appealingly sunny, innocent outlook which prized about their work. Though later albums have their happier moments - it's not like they've gone goth all of a sudden - it requires picking through a more cluttered emotional landscape, and with music which works as strongly on emotion as Pendragon does, that can be an issue.

What makes The Masquerade Overture really interesting in this respect is that it's the album where that innocence is being tested, but it hasn't been outright broken yet - and to my mind, that might make it the most compellingly interesting emotional landscape that the band have ever explored.