The press kit accompanying Ian Neal’s album, This Gemlike Flame, states that he is a “doctor of reverie”, living in Greece and making music that sounds like 1977 Genesis.
Now, I see a fair few press kits, but that one, it must be said, fairly hits the nail on the head, and, in truth, if your reviewer were not quite so verbose, the review of this album could easily have ended there.
Before discussing the music, I will repeat an oft-spoken truism about my tastes, and that is I tend not to review either tribute acts, or original artists whose influences are so blatantly transposed upon an album. This website primarily exists to promote quality, new, independent music, and I leave the “big boys”, in the main, to Prog magazine and the like.
Having said that, though, I am a huge fan of that period of Genesis’s music – the albums from Trick of the Tail to Duke inclusive are my favourite by the band. Age and discovery in teenage years have something to do with that (I was too young to catch Gabriel-era first time round), but also the lush room and consciousness filling sounds that the band created in that period. Since the age of 13, my favourite music has always been melodic, cinematic progressive rock.
Therefore, Mr Neal’s target audience is the likes of me and my peers.
So, having gotten the rider above out of the way, let us state an absolute fact in this review. What Ian Neal does, he does extremely well. When I first gave this album a spin, I was expecting the living shades of Messrs Banks, Rutherford, Hackett, and Collins to appear from the speaker, and their images to be portrayed somewhere on the album cover. This entire work makes absolutely no bones or pretensions about being anything other than a Genesis love affair, and damned good it is, too.
So, seven pieces of symphonic progressive rock with a definite thematic, a Romantic vision of a pastoral British dreamscape, so very similar to a lot of the material Big Big Train have released in that regard. The artwork, incidentally, is lush by Olga Lewska.
We begin with a piece where even the title is; i) Split Into; ii) Its Constituent; iii) Parts. How Dreams Do Creep (for souls asleep) – i) The fruit to grow up; ii) Into the blushing pear or plum; iii) To cakes of ice, or flakes of snow.
Unquiet Slumbers, indeed. The lyrics are taken from a Robert Herrick poem in the 17th century, about unrequited love. This is just over nine minutes, and immediately, the lush Banks-esque soundscapes hit you, alongside a drum riff Collins himself would be proud of, some flute and mellotron, in a nod to previous glories, the guitar work especially rich and warm. This is the core of the album – Neal creates an atmosphere that immediately pulls the aficionado up by the bootstraps. In amongst all this, though, are some pleasing jazz sensibilities, so witness the bass guitar rightly described by my good friend, Thomas Szirmay, as “brawny”. The voice is pleasing and does not try to emulate Collins, whilst the guitar chops are loud and proud in the finest prog tradition. This track is embedded at the foot of the review for you to enjoy and give you a very strong indicator of what to expect.
Late States, Eden’s Gates is essentially Wot Gorilla & In That Quiet Earth. The drumming here is by Kyle P. Nish, and he and Neal throbbing away on the bass make a very effective rhythm section. If you loved the source material, you would love this.
Enitharmon’s Dream is a short piece, almost an interlude really, and is based on a William Blake poem. The music here channels Banks on A Curious Feeling. It is lovely, easy to imagine as the classical piece it was originally written as, and most Genesis fans would agree the inspiration album was Banks’s finest moment in an otherwise underwhelming solo career.
It’s epic time next with Cretan Angel, this split into four movements, and is the visitation spiritual exposition of a guardian angel guiding a soul through darkness toward deliverance, so some classical religiosity in the theme of Second Coming and redemption. In true symphonic prog tradition, the whole piece builds up from an effortlessly gentle, acoustic beginning. I like the dreamy fragility in the vocals, the soul lost. Neal allows the whole piece to breathe very well, the keys in the initial passages taken straight from TOTT, but 12-string guitar at the heart of it all, and as we move to the sumptuously expansive four-minute outro, signifying deliverance, the musical heart cries in joy.
Fresco takes its inspiration from Submarine; the track recorded as part of the Abacab sessions and originally intended to be a part of the Dodo/Lurker Suite and released as a B-Side to Man On the Corner but reimagining it with a Hackett input. It is a broody piece of music, and the guitar riffs are full of impact as intended. Clever reworking of music from a period of the band’s history most “classic” fans decry, but I still liked.
The penultimate piece is Of Aether, Rose and Spangling Dew, which returns to the poet, Robert Herrick. Neal here includes a lush flute in the style of John Hackett alongside a gorgeous Hammond, and this wonderful piece of music is also embedded at the foot of the review, a contender for “bucolic piece of the year” in this website’s annual awards - it segues, wind and all, into closer, and another epic, Leonardo, a suite of five movements, based upon Walter Pater’s 1873 essay on Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and influenced by classic Hammer Horror orchestral film scoring. There are guest vocals on this from Evgenia Papamikrouli. It is grandiose but again builds up to the expected epic denouement by creating the orchestral template, the voice haunting in its channelling of the eponymous subject before an explosion of guitar and synth-led noise, theatrical and extremely well performed, with some of the arrangements more, to these ears, related to later period “longs” on Genesis’s output. The denouement is a suitably glorious noise of the kind you would expect to hear in the Baroque surroundings of a Roman cathedral.
To conclude this review, what Ian Neal has released a fine album. He is a very talented musician – not once do you get the impression that his multi-instrumentalist application is spread too thinly, and, frankly, if you get deep pleasure from classical symphonic prog rock, this album is a shoo-in for you. Perhaps get the other half, or offspring, to make this a special lush, packaged Christmas present? They can do so at https://ianneal.bandcamp.com/album/this-gemlike-flame