vote
7.0
- Band:
The Flower Kings - Duration: 01:11:30
- Available since: 02/05/2025
- Label:
-
Inside out
“Love” is the title chosen by The Flower Kings for their seventeenth studio album, which follows the previous “Look at you now” by a couple of years and which celebrates the strength and beauty of love over twelve tracks.
As always strongly inspired by the prog rock of the golden era, between the late 1960s and the early 70s, the group of Roine Stalt opens with a series of traces with a very classic sound: “We claim the moon” is a good opening uptempo, while the subsequent songs, including the suite “The Elder” and the short instrumental “World Spinning”, are very delicate. Soft and atmospheric: these are good pieces, which however do not seem to be able to fully express the band's expressive qualities.
Unlike the previous album, however, the tracklist grows a lot after the first tracks: already “Burning Both Edges” returns to enchant more with the splendid phrasing between the guitar of Roine Stalt and the mellotron of Lalle Larson, but also with an effective ensemble of voices, followed by “The Rubble”, perhaps less prog in the sounds and more close to the R&B, but captivating. After another short instrumental, another beautiful trio of songs starts, somehow united by the fact of being dedicated to the hope and the possibility of creating a better world, or “The Phoenix”, “The Promise” – a piece that in some ways makes Bob Dylan think a little, but with the spotless inserts of accordion – and the beautiful “Love is”, changing and suggestive, an authentic hymn. to love.
At the end of the tracklist, you can breathe some Pinkfloydian atmosphere in “Walls of Shame”, and then leave room for the final suite “Considerations”, also embellished with splendid guitar and Hammond solos.
The vocation of The Flower Kings has always been to play a very classic prog rock certainly, however, as we have seen, at least in recent years, Roine Stalt and companions have expressed the best results when they tried a little to rejuvenate the sound and to look for a pinch of originality more. With albums such as “By Royal Decree” and “Look at You Now”, the band seemed to have returned more than ever to the past, while we note that with this new work the Swedish group has managed to create an album that does not repudiate the classic sounds at all, but that at the same time manages to play somewhat fresh and current.
Let's say that the first part of the album does not excite us particularly and, above all, from a wide -ranging track like “The Elder” we would have expected something more, however, as a whole, “Love” is certainly a good album, as always embellished with the skill of the musicians. In this regard, we have not yet mentioned the protagonists of the rhythmic section, once again entrusted to the excellent Michael Stalt on bass and Mirko Demaio for the battery.
The Flower Kings therefore manage in this case to find the right formula to create a good mix and an optimal balance of technique, feeling and compositional quality, thus creating one of their best jobs in recent years.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
