Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Riverside
Label: Inside Out Records
Release: 2015
Duration: 60:25
Rating: 4.5/5
If there’s a band anywhere on the planet right now that’s widening its artistic expression, its musical character, at an exponential pace, basking in the glow of total, free-spirited originality, it’s got to be the Poles in Riverside. Over 14 years of existence, the band has gone through a huge artistic transition, and the evolution just keeps rolling. Today we can safely count Riverside among the most important bands holding on to all the allure and evergreen appeal of everything that stands behind the term progressive rock! If the Brits have Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree, and the Swedes have Opeth, then the third European torchbearer is definitely Riverside.
Every album the band has put out hinted at a gradual stylistic shift from progressive metal to progressive rock. If »Anno Domini High Definition« counts as the most experimental record of their career to date, then its successor »Shrine of New Generation Slaves« (2013) was a clear swerve toward progressive rock. Two and a half years later came the sixth studio album overall, »Love, Fear And Time Machine. On it, Riverside step up the softening of their sound even further, and the guitar phrases only echo their former metal leanings in whispers, like a welcome ambient seasoning that now and then gratefully »stirs up« the proceedings and keeps the album dynamic.
Singer Mariusz Duda keeps growing and maturing into an excellent interpreter. The guy has a gorgeous natural voice, and this time he puts it to work better than ever before. In fact, the vocal delivery is one of the main focal points of the new album. Considering that Mariusz is the author of the album’s poetry, the way he lives through those words in his singing is wrapped this time in a special kind of softness and warmth, serenity and inner peace, which, on top of the typical Riverside melancholy, creates a feeling of hope and a gaze toward a bright future. Mariusz Duda’s voice remains the focal point of this band’s expressive essence and one of the driving engines that stamps the new album, too, with a clear mark of absolute artistic uniqueness.
The album is organic from head to toe. Sonically it leans toward seventies production. The songs are built on the sound of the Mellotron, plus Hammond tones and classic piano. The keyboard arrangements are often an important building block of the atmospheric curtains the album floats on. Riverside have mellowed out even further on the new record. The album is strikingly sophisticated and soft. It’s also a record where, alongside the typical melancholy, which Riverside have always been masters of, a psychedelic element dominates. Because of that, at moments Riverside remind us of Pink Floyd on the new record more than ever before. Especially in the closing stretch, the album gradually settles down completely through the sequence of Towards the Blue Horizon (which, along with Under the Pillow and Discard Your Fear, stirs up fresh associations with Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree), Time Travellers and Found (The Unexpected Flaw of Searching). The Pink Floyd aftertaste comes mostly from that last one, Found (The Unexpected Flaw of Searching), where shortly after the three-minute mark there’s a transition identical to one of the key transitions in the Pink Floyd song Have A Cigar. The sound across the album rests on strikingly layered guitar and keyboard lines, and the symbiosis between the two instruments is fascinating. Motifs are laid down against the backdrop of the soundscape in a totally unpretentious way, subordinated to building a lofty atmosphere that’s so strong and overwhelming it can whisk you off to a parallel world beyond reality in an instant (if you dare to let the music lead you).
Love Fear And The Time Machine is special in one more way. It’s a much more compact album than its predecessor, and therefore the easiest to get into of anything the band has made in its career so far. That means it has a musicality Riverside hadn’t managed to develop until now. The motifs go straight to the ear, yet their richness of ideas and variety never once give off a feeling of repeating themselves. Preserving artistic distinctiveness in the musical universe while staying firmly on the border between compositional complexity and pronounced musicality is, in the 21st century, a sign of great artistic craftsmanship in individual musical talents, and Riverside undoubtedly belong among them!
This time the album’s messages take us through a transition of the mind, where you meet childhood with its girlish naivety and sincerity. This is the point where the presence of naive love first collides with the will to control, dominate, and conform – that is, with everything that generates fear in our hearts. The message goes even deeper. It’s based on the individual’s mission to overcome this tug-of-war between love and fear, because fear is the energy of the dark force, the thing that has been eating away at the planet ever since humans settled it and declared themselves the only »rational« beings. But the album also offers a feeling of hope. Riverside leave a ray of sunshine at the end of the tunnel. It’s the ray that shines through and cleanses the soul and gives you the strength to stay strong even in temptation, when fear and all those other emotions that push you toward negative acts take hold of you. If you can fend off those temptations like a mature judge full of real emotional and spiritual intelligence, then you can become a better person, one who can generate positive energy and share it with nature, which you are part of. Or, given the senselessly destructive character of humankind, let’s soften the thesis a bit: which you are supposedly maybe part of.
»Love, Fear And The Time Machine« is a new top-shelf album confirming that Riverside keep reaching, very successfully, for new challenges, masterfully pouring the big ideas they absorb in their melting pot into a format of absolute artistic originality. In keeping with the album’s core message, the poetry is atmospherically magnified and literally comes alive when the music sucks you into its world. This is an album of striking unpretentiousness, inner peace, and serenity that, next to the typical melancholy, feels soft and organic, yet also remarkably musical, and on top of all that carries an unmistakable psychedelic element. An album of the band’s new and very successful musical transition, full-blooded, tangible musical substance that never stops thrilling with its uniqueness.
Lineup
Mariusz Duda – vocals, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, ukulele
Piotr Grudzinski – guitar
Michal Lapaj – keyboards, Hammond organ
Piotr Kozieradzki – drums
Production
Riverside
Track list
1. Lost (Why Should I Be Frightened By a Hat?) (5:52)
2. Under the Pillow (6:47)
3. #Addicted (4:52)
4. Caterpillar and the Barbed Wire (6:56)
5. Saturate Me (7:08)
6. Afloat (3:11)
7. Discard Your Fear (6:42)
8. Towards the Blue Horizon (8:09)
9. Time Travelers (6:42)
10. Found (The Unexpected Flaw of Searching) (4:03)
