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Ty Tabor - Moonflower Lane

Artist:	Ty Tabor
Title:	Moonflower Lane
Label:	Inside Out IOMCD 23
Length(s):	38 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1998
Month of review:	04/1998

Line up

Ty Tabor - all
except
Alan Doss - drums, percussion, organ

Tracks

1)	I Do	3.25
2)	The Island Sea	3.56
3)	Live In Your House	4.15
4)	I Know Everything	5.25
5)	The Truth	4.30
6)	Without You	4.19
7)	Hollow Eyes	5.49
8)	Walk With My Love	3.05
9)	Another Day	3.15
10)	Her Palace	5.31

Summary

Aha, another promo thingy, but this time the lyrics are included (this used to be different some time ago). Also from the titles it seems that Tabor may be quite poetic. In case you wondered why this guy is reviewed here, he's from King's X that made some thoroughly enjoyable albums in their time, but never made it big.

The music

Since King's X is a band of interest to proggers, I feel obliged to take this one on as well, to see how it compares. As with King's X the music is quite rocky, with harmony vocals and as it is, the opening track is quite nice: comparatively soft verses and a rocking chorus with heavy guitars and harmony vocals. I like the drumming quite a lot on this effort. The Island Sea is in the same vein. The music reminds me not only of King's X, but through this also of the Beatles and Lenny Kravitz. This Beatles influence is strenghtened by the presenc of the cello on for instance Live In Your House. For the rest this track is a bit boring. The same holds somewhat for I Know Everything: the vocal melody is not very interesting and the use of the vocals is the same as on the other tracks, but the loud ending with again that great drumming save the song somewhat and that cellistic afterbirth is also quite nice. But what I mind about this music are the uninventive choruses and vocal melodies. Nice thing about Without You is the meandering of the vocal melody in the chorus, but the verses sound like I've heard them before. It seems that Tabor has a knack for ending his songs well since of Hollow Eyes, the ending is also the most likable part. On the romantic Walk With My Love his vocals are at first treated a bit. The rock is back on Another Day. On the whole I'm tempted to compare Her Palace on this album to Kindness Of Strangers of Spock's Beard (organ, vocals), but then only the verses or a song like June. I also have to admit that also there I prefer Spock's Beard (disregarding the fact that they are more varied). Especially this song, which is one of the more varied ones, shows quite a likeness to Spock's Beard.

Conclusion

The problem with this CD is the lack of appealing melodies and the instrumentation that is on the one hand quite good, especially the drusm, but for progressive not varied enough. This is what we might call singer/ songwriter hardrock in the vein of King's X (but less hard I guess), and echoes of both Beatles and through this of Spock's Beard. But I feel that the music on this album is too selfsimilar and shows too little variety to be interesting for proggers.