Still riding on a wave of creativity and inspiration, Swedish prog powerhouse band The Flower Kings jump back up into the saddle with the release of Love, their seventeenth studio album, and their fifth since the band came out of their five year hiatus in 2019.
Whilst much of the music can trace its original spirit back to prog’s halcyon days of the nineteen seventies, the message running through this album goes back to the preceding decade, when ‘all you needed was Love.’ Band main man Roine Stolt states “we live in troubled times, yet choose to follow leaders who aren’t fit to lead. Love can change everything but we choose to burn the house down time after time”.
Love is an album with its roots firmly in the prog traditions of the early seventies, with a notable influence being Yes. And, just like Yes, sometimes their music can be a little too epic .. songs being overlong or there being too many of them .. but the twelve songs on Love are mostly relatively short, with only two exceeding the ten minute mark. It’s an album full of the usual Flower King mix, with a couple of ballads, some classic rock, an occasional touch of jazz and plenty of well played prog.
Roine Stolt may well be knocking on the door of entering his eighth decade, but he’s lost little of his compositional talent and melodic flair, as shown on the up-tempo, melodic ‘We Claim The Moon’ and the emotion tinged ‘How Can You Leave’. ‘Burning Both Edges,’ a song about forgetting strife and seeing things different, which sates “.. no more wars, no more worries, there’s a hatchet to bury ..” features Stolt offering some lovely guitar work. It’s easy to forget just how good he is on guitar. The Yes influence is noticeable at the very start of The Phoenix, with a similarity to ‘And You and I,’ and closing track, the glorious full-on prog ‘Considerations’ – Immediately this brings Yes’ ‘Awaken’ to mind with the same melodic keyboard phasing. The other long track ‘The Elder,’ starts slow and gathers momentum as it unfolds, being musically reminiscent of Yes but with lyrics which’re too worldly .. hard to imagine the ethereal Jon Anderson singing “I’m waiting for the lights to change, I’m waiting for the outbound train”.
The Flower Kings have always released consistently good, if not necessarily great, albums, and Love comes under this. Earlier albums were a little more rocky and bombastic, but this is a more lower key, mostly song oriented, release .. a solid enjoyable piece of work.
