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Shadowland - Through The Looking Glass

Artist:	Shadowland
Title:	Through The Looking Glass
Label:	Verglas VGCD 010
Length(s):	65 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1994/1997
Month of review:	02/1998

Line up

Clive Nolan - keyboards, vocals, violin
Karl Groom - guitars
Nick Harradence - drums
Ian Salmon - bass, acoustic guitar

Tracks

1)	A Matter Of Perspective	2.16
2)	The Hunger	6.27
3)	Dreams Of The Ferryman	8.44
4)	Half Moon Street	7.17
5)	When The World Turns To White	9.05
6)	The Waking Hour	7.49
7)	Through The Looking Glass	11.19
8)	Mindgames	7.21
9)	So The Music Stops	4.29

Summary

The second album of Shadowland rereleased on Verglas, making all albums available. Added to the album is the bonus track So The Music Stops from the Dreams Of The Ferryman CDsingle, which was released on SI Music along with the album.

The music

The title of the album refers of course to Alice in Wonderland and in fact, the booklet contains a prologue taken from Lewis Carroll. The music opens with the rather weak, but short semi-acoustic A Matter Of Perspective, to continue with the up-tempo bombast of The Hunger with a terribly catchy chorus and a full keyboard sound, sometimes reminiscent of Three Boats Down From The Candy (should I say here, that this is a track by Marillion?). A nice track, although straightforward and the drumming is a bit monotonous. Somewhat better is the epic Dreams Of The Ferryman that was also released on single. The song has a rather dark and brooding atmosphere with nice melodies, but moreover synthetic, wavery violins in the back lending a nice atmosphere to the song. The end passage reminds me of Genesis' Dance On The Volcano. Half Moon Street is also a rather dark song with fire of an automatic rifle and a dark guitarsound, almost gothic. As always the chorus is catchy, inescapable with a band like Shadowland. The song ends very well with a nice repetitive melody on the guitar. When The World Turns To White opens with clavecimbel and as a whole in a rather classical way with Nolan on violin. The continuation is at first not very interesting, but later on the song picks up with a nice bridge and the uplifting chorus returns at the end. The Waking Hour has some nice subdued parts with the bass playing the melody, but for the most part, I'm not fond of this track, which is a little too simple and uninspired. The title track is a lot better, with a mysterious Fruitcake-ish opening. As one might expect from a track that is over 10 minutes long, there's quite a lot of variation with some nice rhythm guitar, a percolating melody on the acoustic guitar and a after a good guitar solo a nice speed up in the music towards the end. Mindgames closed the original version. It builds upon the opener A Matter Of Perspective and it is a bit of a singalong track, acoustic and simple, but with tasteful additions on electric guitar. Uplifting though.

The bonus track So The Music Stops and was originally devoted to Geoff Mann. It is a piano ballad with a nice melody and rather melodramatically sung.

Conclusion

As always, the band spins a catchy yarn, but some of the compositions sound a little too simple and well easy. I like them better in the more menacing tracks such as The Hunger, Dreams Of The Ferryman, Half Moon Street and Through The Looking Glass. Parallels can of course be drawn with Nolans current number one band Arena, but I do think that Arena is a little better, though the style is the same.