I listen to a lot of albums, and sometimes I get posed with a real reviewing challenge - the worst of it is never how to tear something down or how to hype something up, but how to describe the rather mundane, fine work. Usually, I don't have a problem with it, but Van Der Graaf Generator has left he hamstrung. This is not a bad record, far from it - the band is incredibly technically good, and they can jump around different musical movements and timbres at the drop of a drumstick, and I certainly find their slightly more electronic sound far more compelling than other progressive rock acts (looking at you, ELP). Even still, I feel this album has left very little to the imagination. The opening track is fine, and the 23-minute epic "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" is almost certainly the strongest moment out of the album's three songs, but this is pretty standard progressive rock in all honesty - a solid enough representation of a genre that is very good when it's good and some of the most pretentious, trite shit I've ever heard at its worst. Luckily, this doesn't lean too much into the pretentious territory - I'm not so sure it leans into much, honestly. If you like jazzy progressive rock, a-la Soft Machine's Third LP, you'll probably get a kick out of this.
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Listen to Pawn Hearts.
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