Jolly: The Audio Guide to Happiness (Part 2)

Though at times it's hard to tell if it's intentional or not, the concept behind Jolly's two-part LP The Audio Guide to Happiness is pretty damn funny. Every now and then, in the brief "Guidances," a clinical, almost robotic voice instructs the listener as to how the music should be experienced; these continue until the fourth "Guidance," the point by which the listener should have achieved "happiness." The techy, emotionally distant aspects of prog—the endless guitar soloing, overly grandiose arrangements, and the overeager Julliard freshman compositional style—are the most frequently publicized, and generically speaking you don't go to prog to have your heartstrings tugged at. For that reason, the though of a prog band collaborating with academics on how to manufacture music designed to psychologically appeal to their audience is perhaps the ultimate nerd joke: if you can't win them over with the music you typically write, use science to fix it!

Fortunately, there's no forced emotion on The Audio Guide to Happiness (Part 2), the followup to 2011's Part One. Part Two carries on in the metallic neo-prog of Part One, though it's much more successful. Like most contemporary prog metal, the record can be called "suite-like" or "labyrinthine" in its composition, but what's remarkable about Jolly's style is their ability to make the whole album feel like one song while retaining the individuality of all the individual tracks. The whole thing flows seamlessly, though it does have a clear division following "Guidance Four." The relatively heavier first half gives way to a much poppier final stretch.

It's in this split that Part Two finds its biggest weakness. After "Guidance Three" re-establishes the therapeutic theme of the LP, "Firewall" kicks things off with gusto. Full of melodic death metal guitar lines and great vocal melodies, "Firewall" is one of the best prog tracks of 2013 thus far, a perfect example of how to balance brutality and beauty. Strangely enough, however, the energy of that track doesn't carry on through the rest of the album; Part Two peaks pretty early. Opportunities like "Dust Nation Bleak"—which kinda pulls of a guitar tone most would ordinarily dismiss as too djent-y—are largely underutilized. While a name like Jolly would seem to suggest that these guys are keen on peppy pop, Jolly the prog metal band are eminently more interesting than Jolly the pop band, and for the rest of the LP it's the latter that starts to edge out the former. Case in point "Lucky," which places a sugar-sweet synth-pop melody atop a matching chunky guitar riff, to a very uneven effect; imagine Carly Rae Jepsen commissioning Killswitch Engage to co-write a song with her and you wouldn't be far off.

There are instances where exceptions to this arise. "You Against the World" is the ballad Dream Theater's "Wither" still wishes it could be, and "While We Slept in Burning Shades" is a solid mid-tempo piece that fittingly winds down the album. In the end the cumbersome balance of metal's crunch and pop's sing-songiness doesn't outweigh the overall strength of The Audio Guide to Happiness (Part 2); maybe it's evidence that the journey to happiness isn't one free of perfections. This is a strong prog record, and it's a sign that Jolly are one of prog's true up-and-coming bands.

Track Listing

01. Guidance Three
02. Firewall
03. You Against the World
04. Aqualand and the 7 Suns
05. Dust Nation Bleak
06. Golden Divide
07. Guidance Four
08. Lucky
09. While We Slept in Burning Shades
10. Despite the Shell
11. As Heard on Tape
12. The Grand Utopia

Added: April 14th 2013
Reviewer: Brice Ezell
Score:
Related Link: Band Site
Hits: 4695
Language: english

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