Style: Progressive rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Neal Morse, The Flower Kings, Marillion, Renaissance, Steven Wilson (Raven era)
Review by: Ian
Country: New Jersey, United States
Release Date: 12 December 2023
Anyone else remember Transatlantic? Evidently not a lot of folks do since they’ve dropped below our 20k monthly Spotify listener cap, but for a while the retro-prog supergroup of Neal Morse (Spock’s Beard), Roine Stolt (The Flower Kings), Pete Trewavas (Marillion), and Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater) were absolute titans of the genre. By taking a maximalist, noodly approach that harkened back to prog’s ’70s roots and blending it with Morse and Stolt’s unapologetically optimistic melodies and lyrics as well as a dose of Beatlesque vocal harmony, they crafted some of the absolute best long-form suites around, including their seventy-eight-minute magnum opus The Whirlwind.
I ask this because The Cycle Undone, the second outing from New Jersey prog collective The Twenty Committee, has the now-defunct band’s scent all over it. From the sprawling suites to the gleefully retro sonic palette to the major key sing-along choruses laden with harmonies, it’s all here. To be fair, the band does cite other influences beyond Morse, including Steven Wilson (they likely have The Raven That Refused to Sing on repeat), Chick Corea (There is a touch of fusion-y flavor on some of those keyboard solos) and, uh… “tabletop gaming” (my sessions tend to involve less weedly synths and more hour-long discussions on how to break the local economy, but hey, every group’s different). Still, for the most part, this is music for dusting off the ol’ airship and taking a flight to Europe across the ocean. It’s far from original, but hey, neither were their inspirations, and these old prog tropes are tropes for a reason after all.
After a brief atmospheric intro, twelve-minute opener “Recodified” kicks into high gear and makes it clear that these guys can really play. Bandleader Geoffrey Langley’s keyboards take turns with Jeff Bishop’s dexterous lead guitar as they charge through everything from relaxed jam-band grooves to explosive blasts of classic prog organ. Four and a half minutes in, the music calms to a slow ballad and Langley’s vocals finally enter. Though his voice bears a certain resemblance to Neal Morse‘s smooth, mid-placed tenor, he does make an effort to be more versatile with his falsetto, and soon enough the other band members add warm-sounding layers of backing vocals that intertwine with Langley’s nicely. After that, there’s a gradual buildup of instrumentation, a cool odd-meter guitar solo from Bishop, and a reprise of some of the instrumentals at the beginning to close out the tune- overall, a well-structured thesis statement for the album as a whole.
Much of the rest of the album continues in the same general sonic territory, though the next few tracks are a bit more straightforward and less structurally adventurous. You’ve got your spacey synthscapes and pensive acoustic strumming (“A Star in the Eye”), sunny major key “ba-ba-ba” harmonies (“Sparks in the Mind”, “Forevermore”), and the heartstring-tugging ballad (“Embers”) complete with a big, climactic David Gilmour-influenced guitar solo that’s sure to blow them all away, if you catch my drift. Yet, despite me being able to draw a direct line from pretty much every single synth tone, guitar line, and melodic flourish to music I’ve heard before, I couldn’t keep a silly grin from spreading across my face as I listened. These choruses may be cheesy, the instrumentation derivative, but god damn does it all feel great to listen to.
And that’s where The Twenty Committee latch onto a fundamental truth of music making— there’s no point reinventing the wheel so long as you can make it spin, and you better believe The Cycle Undone spins harder than a Category 5. Geoffrey Langley puts on an absolute keyboard masterclass throughout the entire album, from the absolutely nutty synth solo at the climax of “Forevermore” that goes weedly-weedly enough to make Jordan Rudess blush, to the dynamic, tasteful minute and a half of solitary piano that opens the album’s lengthy title track. He’s also a solid singer with a soft, warm-sounding timbre perfect for conveying hopeful croons and melancholic laments alike. True, he’s no powerhouse belter, but he seems aware enough of this fact to let the instrumentals do the talking during the more energetic passages. In a way, his relative vocal conservatism works in his favor, making the Broadway-tinged melodrama that suffuses each chorus come across as genuine and emotive rather than overblown and goofy.
The other band members are no slouches either. Jeff Bishop’s guitar heroics have already been mentioned, but Justin Carlton’s rhythm guitar work is a key driver of the album’s dynamics, shifting from plucked acoustics and shimmering cleans to big, brawny riffs that provide a rock-solid backing for the solo pyrotechnics going on around him. Speaking of rock-solid, Richmond Carlton and Joe Henderson are a tight rhythm section, adding intricate layers of accented beats to songs like “Sparks in the Mind” that reward close listens. Carlton even adds in a few fun little fretless leads at points, though he never gets to cut loose with a full-on solo. The most notable name here, though, is Renaissance‘s Annie Haslam, who graces the title track with a vocal feature. Her distinctive soprano has aged slightly since the ’70s but has lost none of its power, busting out wailing, witchy high notes in a great contrast to Langley’s more reserved range.
Though the Bandcamp upload unfortunately lacks lyrics, what I could glean from my listens and the band’s own statements is that The Cycle Undone tells a dystopian, sci-fi story of a morally flawed society dealing with rapid technological growth and the rise of increasingly-advanced robots, a world in which everything changes, yet somehow remains the same. It’s hard for me not to see the album in a similar frame- like an automaton that has achieved true sapience, it is, on the surface, just another assembly-line product, well-made and highly functional but soulless. Yet within that manufactured frame lies an entity as nuanced and emotionally-driven as any one of us beings of flesh, and as (non-outro) closer “Robot Death” moves from its lighter-in-the-air “la-na-na-na” refrain to one last pair of soaring solos, I finally realize that just because something is made from old, familiar parts doesn’t make it any less human.
Recommended tracks: Recodified, Embers, Forevermore, The Cycle Undone
You may also like: Transatlantic, Karmakanic, Magic Pie, Moon Safari
Final Verdict: 8/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
Label: Independent
The Twenty Committee is:
– Geoffrey Langley (lead vocals, keyboards)
– Justin Carlton (acoustic and electric guitars, backing vocals, additional keyboards on tracks 1, 2, and 5)
– Joe Henderson (drums, backing vocals, percussion on track 7)
– Jeff Bishop (lead guitar, additional backing vocals on tracks 3, 4, and 6)
– Richmond Carlton (bass, harp on track 4, additional backing vocals on tracks 2 and 4)
with:
– Laura Langley (autoharp on track 4)
– Annie Haslam (vocals on track 6)
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