EDENSONG
Our Road To Dust THE LASER’S EDGE
Ian Anderson-approved heartland proggers release long-awaited second album.
Praise from a musical legend can be a double-edged sword. Ian Anderson was bang on when he described Edensong as “a great example of contemporary progressive rock”, but it does make comparisons to Jethro Tull inevitable. In truth, that’s often the case for a band playing folk-tinged proggy rock with a flute placed front and centre. There are familiar elements certainly, with additional hints of Kansas when they haul out the violins, but the New Yorkers tease those strands into new patterns as they weave their own sonic tapestry. Their road to dust isn’t as bleak as the titular ash-choked highway in Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, though. It isn’t even especially world-weary, but there’s a nodding acceptance to its lyrical musings on life and their never-ending ‘Don Quixote quest’. Musically, it often teeters on the edge of a prog-metal explosion but never quite spills over, defusing the tension via big melodic passages and sparse acoustic segments instead.