It has been three years since Texas progressive rock band The Aaron Clift Experiment released their sophomore effort Outer Light, Inner Darkness. I thought that to be an excellent release so I was rather excited to listen to their new album titled If All Goes Wrong. Their previous release was a concept album but with the new one it is not clear to me without a lyric sheet available. Lyrics aside, let’s talk about the music on this new platter.
The band rocks hard right out of the gate with “Faith”, an intense slice of guitar driven rock music. A rocking groove with big crunchy guitars and solid lead vocals is what you should expect. It’s a very guitar dominated track with ton of energy to set the rest of the album in motion. The keyboards are more prominent in the next track “Last Crash”. A keyboard bathed opening morphs into dreamier guitar and heavier riffage. The near syncopated rhythms are quite progressive sounding with the band showing a good amount of skill. On “Absent Lovers”, the disc’s longest track, a delicate acoustic guitar and rich strings offer a hint of melancholy. The bass, keyboard, guitar and string interaction is a fine progressive moment harkening back to ‘70s era Kansas. On the joyously buoyant “Better Off Before” Queen and The Beatles come to mind making this one of the album’s catchiest tracks. Beds of organ and off kilter rhythms highlight the proggy “Castle in the Sky” whereas “Savage in a Fancy Suit” recalls a slightly tamer Deep Purple or Iron Butterfly but still rocks pretty hard. Organ fans should get plenty of mileage out of this one. The disc ends with the pretty piano led ballad “Back to the Water”.
If All Goes Wrong continues to steer the band towards melodic progressive rock with rather large doses of AOR. This blending sounds mighty fine, at least to these ears. Recommended.
Track Listing:
1. Faith (4:51)
2. Last Crash (5:29)
3. Absent Lovers (8:15)
4. Better Off Before (3:08)
5. Castle in the Sky (4:33)
6. Savage in a Fancy Suit (4:43)
7. Dream Within a Dream (7:58)
8. Wild Hunters (2:52)
9. If All Goes Wrong (5:34)
10. Back to the Water (bonus track) (5:01)
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It has been three years since Texas progressive rock band The Aaron Clift Experiment released their sophomore effort Outer Light, Inner Darkness. I thought that to be an excellent release so I was rather excited to listen to their new album titled If All Goes Wrong. Their previous release was a concept album but with the new one it is not clear to me without a lyric sheet available. Lyrics aside, let’s talk about the music on this new platter.
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