Clearly now comfortable inside their own skin, with this, their third offering,
'Revolution Roulette',
Poets Of The Fall have delivered an extremely personal and at times, truly magnificent piece of work.
It's largely introspective. There are no grand gestures, no nods to the past, except maybe to a few of rock's innovators, like Lou Reed and Trent Reznor. It gains real weight from a strongly melancholic undertow.
The album opens with two moody, almost indulgent musical musings -
'More' and
'Ultimate Fling' - both filled with lyrical observations on addiction and greed.
The third and title track
'Revolution Roulette' successfully marries heavy contemporary rock together with moody orchestral moments. It's a classy chunk of post grunge melodic rock and gives the album much needed momentum.
Yet, in the next moment, a sudden gearshift into a sweetly acoustic song like
'Fragile' catches you totally by surprise. It's a song that takes a while to establish a handhold, but once it does, it holds on with the grasp of a drowning man.
The cleverly titled
'Clevermind' is not what you might think. Instead it has a distinct, if edgy, alt country flavour, and let's face it, new country is more rock than anything else nowadays.
On the downside,
'Miss Impossible' and
'Save Me' suggest the bands have run out of big ideas and have worked up songs from riffs that are nothing special to begin with.
The sombre
'Diamonds For Tears' and the elegant
'Passion Colours Everything' are plain, unvarnished contemporary hard rock songs, muscular yet tender, bitter yet sturdily melodic, performed with conviction.
These tracks alone form a convincing argument that
Europe has caught up and may even have overtaken North America in the creation of popular, modern, innovative rock music.
The moving and magnificently apposite closing cut,
'Where Do We Draw The Line' undulates slowly through an articulate lyric sketched around an atmospheric piano. It builds into a ridiculously grandiose finale, but it's a song that will continue to resonate long after the last chord has faded.
Poets Of The Fall have truly arrived.
Written by
Brian Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Show all reviews by BrianRatingsBrian: 7.5/10Members: 8/10 - Average of 1 ratings.
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