The Skys – Automatic Minds
Album Review By David Kerber
The Lithuanian band The Skys was founded in 1995. For their fourth album, the band has again invited some illustrious guests. The best known are certainly Snowy White and Neil Taylor (Robbie Williams Band). The Lithuanians play Progressive Rock in the style of Pink Floyd with light Deep Purple bonds.
Rocky guitars introduce the opener before the keyboard takes over the melody. Somewhat in need of getting used to is the pretty choppy singing of keyboardist Bozena. The guitar solo at the end advances into Pink Floyd spheres, only played a little harder.
The title track then uses floyd’s saxophone sounds and purplesque Hammond organ sounds. The vocals are shared by guitarist Jonas and Bozena, although the overall vocal parts are quite few.
Despite being almost 5 minutes long, “The Guardian of the Water Tower” is a pretty epic song that lives off the guitar and the vocals.
The “Singing Tree” is, apart from a slightly loud saxophone solo, a quiet, dreamy ballad.
“Templar’s last stand” is one of the rockier numbers of the album garnished with shimmering keyboard sounds, rather quiet middle section and Jon Lord memory solo.
“Love of life” begins and ends with a great, melodic guitar solo. In between there is two-part singing and a lot of melancholy. Although the solo could have been a bit longer at the end, the fade-out comes way too early.
In “Dry water” Bozena (or a guest singer) tries to imitate Sam Brown’s strong vocals in “A great gig in the sky”, which unfortunately only partially succeeds. Apart from that the song is pretty meaningless. The weakest song of the record.
As an (almost) crowning conclusion there is the epic, almost 8 minutes “Dead end”. Here The Skys show what they really have it. First-class vocals, great melodies and solos to kneel down. By far the best song on the album.
Even the bouncer “Communication” is a strong song that leaves little to be desired.
Unfortunately, the band can show their skills only sporadically over the entire duration of the album. A few more strong songs would have done the album well. So much mediocrity remains with good approaches, which, for whatever reason, were rarely fully exhausted. There could definitely have been more in it, after all there is plenty of compositional and playful potential on hand.
The Skys – Singing Tree: https://youtu.be/wLzrZExZS1U
Lineup:
Jonas Ciurlionis – Guitar, Vocals
Bozena Buinicka – Keyboards, Vocals
Justinas Tamasevicius – Bass
Ilja Molodcov – Drums
Label: Self distributed
Out: May 15th, 2019
Playing time: 42:05
Track list:
- Get Rid Of This
- Automatic Minds
- The Guardian Of The Water Tower
- Singing Tree
- Templar’s Last Stand
- Love Of Life
- Dry Water
- Dead End
- Communication
Rating : 6/10
MHF Magazine/David Kerber
