[Cover art by Quinn Henderson]
You’re familiar with the term, “unc,” right? If not, it generally refers to a washed up older feller whose personality in large part revolves around extravagantly performing confusion and/or displeasure at the mere notion of people being between the ages of 12-28 in the wrong way. Wherever the youths are enjoying a new musical sub-genre with a weird name, confidently sporting asymmetrical hairstyles or lauding the merits of professional athletes born after 1978, uncs are there to provide the necessary correctives. Apocalypse, the latest full length from prog rockers Crown Lands, is the kind of release that crawls directly up the collective backsides of uncs … like me.
Members of Crown Lands and Alex Lifeson
To my ear, the dissonance between what Crown Lands promise and what they deliver is loud and jarring. While so much of Rush’s appeal rested in their ability to produce dynamic recordings of exceptionally complex compositions as a power trio, Crown Lands, which operate as a duo, often sound canned, comped and snapped-to-the grid in post production. You’d be wrong to deny the technical prowess of drummer/vocalist Cody Bowles and guitarist/bassist/keyboardist Kevin Comeau, but that puts your under no obligation to feel their performance.
As for their compositional approach, I could simply tap the sign in the Last Rites break room that reads “at this point prog is a sound associated with an amalgam of well worn “progressive” tropes rather than a truly experimental genre.” But, truth be told? Crown Lands doesn’t even really employ too many of those tropes. You won’t hear much in the way of unconventional harmonic movement or non-perfunctory deployment of odd time signatures. Instead, Crown Lands reach for prog through the album’s concept – a centuries spanning prequel to their 2023 full length, Fearless, dealing with AI and interplanetary colonization – and the eye-watering length of the album’s title track. Closing the album and clocking in at 19 minutes, the standout features of “Apocalypse” are its length and inability to justify it. Here’s a song that moves with the cadence of a five-year-old telling you about a dream they had the night before. We get a thumping, mid-paced bassline that invokes “Bullet the Blue Sky,” we get a nod to “YYZ,” we get a balladic nod to The Mars Volta’s “The Widow” … And then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens …
As an unc, I’m duty bound to advise the uninitiated to simply seek out a copy of 2112 or Hemispheres. And if you’ve already spent your hours with Rush’s classic run, then get more familiar with an unheralded banger like Grace Under Pressure. Still looking for modern prog to scratch a purely musical itch? Check out the review archives of our very own sherpa Lone Watie.
But, you know… in addition to being an unc, due to the family planning quirks of Mediterranean immigrants to the United States, I became an uncle at the ripe old age of four. And did you know that in addition to “the brother of one’s father or mother,” the word uncle has a fascinating tertiary definition? “One who advises.” That’s neat. And it feels different than what an unc does, which is to essentially lecture young people about how they can be more like him. An uncle, making a good faith effort to advise a younger person, might at least attempt to understand where they’re coming from in order to provide some guidance as to where they are going. To that end, I quizzed one of my nieces, who happens to be squarely in Crown Lands’ target demo, about why she wouldn’t simply listen to older, better music as opposed to the pale imitations on offer today? I’ll quote the conversation here:
If we discontinued all these sub-genres solely because they produced bands considered to be some of the best of rock history we get into the ‘is music finite’ conversation. It’s really also that nostalgic aspect of ‘oh hey my dad listened to this kind of music with me while I was growing up.’ It’s familiar and to have that new music having the same feel … it’s comforting.
Despite Crown Lands shortcomings – and I stand by my assertion that they are many – I don’t think their effort to generate a contemporary moment for kids who like expansive but accessible guitar-based music is one of them. And when I listen as an uncle instead of an unc, I can hear the moments where they do it well. The album’s first proper riff, which comes at the beginning of “Foot Soldiers of the Syndicate” after a brief instrumental interlude, simply rocks. Compact, memorable and built around a bluesy lick so intuitive I’m surprised I hadn’t heard it approximately 8,700 times on 104.7 THE ROCKET, The Only Station That Really Rocks between spins of “Money” and “Sharp Dressed Man.” Track 4, “Blackstar,” might be the best Crown Lands has to offer. Here the band moves beyond classic prog-rock conventions and reminds me of the army of U.S. heavy metal bands that got down to business in response to “Operation Mindcrime,” but still had to do their version of a song that might get hips shaking on Sunset Strip.
“The Fall’s” main riff struts credibly before the fellers roll up the sleeves on their sensible blazers and max out every channel on the mixing board for a big, booming chorus. For those who do not wish to see the sub-genres of their parent’s youth discontinued, the moments where Crown Lands step into their own sound while keeping one foot planted in the past might just be the point of the whole deal.
Apocalypse is not an album for the uncs. The music does not substantially fulfill the promise of the presentation, and if you’ve spent even a little bit of your lifetime exploring the prog-rock map you’ll simply be too familiar with artists who’ve done everything on display here earlier and, often, quite a bit better. But, as an uncle, you may find some utility in it as a marker of time simply movin’ on. Maybe you’ve heard it all before, but not everybody has. And because the future cannot be canceled, we can only stand back and hope an album like this serves as a sturdy bridge back to the past for those who wish to explore it
