Pain Of Salvation: Falling Home

Acoustic albums from Rock bands are a common thing these days and yet it is a format that few Prog acts have taken on, especially in the studio, as Pain Of Salvation have with Falling Home. The question therefore has to be, does it work and was it worth the hours of rearranging that must have gone into recreating the sounds of a band known as much for their technical prowess as they are their melodic sensibilities. The answer? Well, even after weeks living with this album I'm not really sure I can definitively provide one of those for either question. I mean yes this does work, "Stress" becoming an unsettling jazz workout, "Linoleum" a bass boinging crawl which brings on a more deranged feel in its delivery and, as with the rest of this album, the vocal arrangements are quite outstanding.

Unsurprisingly it is "1979" which shines brightest in this format, mainman Daniel Gildnelow delivering a stunning vocal as the song rolls along gently, but with intent. What doesn't quite captivate to the same extent is "Chain Sling", which feels a little too cloying to thrive, while the loungy jazz cover of Dio's Metal anthem "Holy Diver" is fun, if utterly throwaway. The Lou Reed standard "Perfect Day" fares much better, even if, in contrast to "Holy...", it is actually a little too close to the original to be truly memorable. "To The Shoreline", as the original does, still feels like it's wandered in from a Spaghetti Western and is all the better for it, while "Flame To The Moth" hits like a feisty Flamenco fling – and would it be unkind to suggest that I was almost waiting for Jack Black to come out and add some over the top narration to the intro of "Spitfall"? Although to be fair the subject matter is decidedly more serious than that suggestion deserves.

In the end, a good song is a good song and Pain Of Salvation are hardly struggling for tracks which in a variety of ways captivate, amaze and delight, so you can be assured that Falling Home is an album which holds the imagination and stretches the mind. Does anything here add to or better the originals, well truth be told not really and there's my only real complaint with Falling Home, for enjoyable though it is, all it really makes me want to do is pull out the albums from which these songs came and hear how they really should be done. That said PoS fans will doubtless lap this up, even if a few months down the line they'll have pretty much forgotten about it.

Track Listing
1. Stress
2. Linoleum
3. To The Shoreline
4. Holy Diver
5. 1979
6. Chain Sling
7. Perfect Day
8. Mrs. Modern Mother Mary
9. Flame To The Moth
10. Spitfall
11. Falling Home
Bonus tracks on Limited Edition CD:
12. She Likes To Hide
13. King Of Loss

Added: December 13th 2014
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Pain Of Salvation online
Hits: 2947
Language: english

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