CORVUS STONE II

Due to the active promoting this album was heavily reviewed 4-5 months ago. I confess I haven't much listened to it during these months, but not because I wouldn't enjoy it. CORVUS STONE is a multinational quartet (keyboardist Pasi Koivu and bassist Petri Lindström being my countrymen from Finland), and worth mentioning as the original namer of the group and "the driving force from day one" is also Sonia Mota, who's painted the hot & sexy cover art. The CS albums may be too unfocused and full to be easily absorbed, but as they themselves state, "you are free to make your 50 minute album from our 80". One has to respect their stubborn and fully devoted passion to make things their own way instead of the safest possible way. My appreciation also to the leaflet with heartfelt credits - and web addresses - to all collaborators and supporters, and lyrics that are mostly written by the guest vocalists in question.

CS II consists of 16 tracks, 7 of them instrumentals. Music is stated to be "extremely varied" and "not genre safe", but I found out that even as a background listening it is rather ear-friendly, despite all the uncoherence one might blame it for. To me this album really seems to be the better and more evenly pleasant musical journey than the debut. There were some genre explorations on the debut that I didn't like. The musicians having fun can sometimes be irritating to the listener. This one is much more coherent to my ears, there wasn't anything I'd strongly dislike and there are more sincere emotions involved in songs, thanks to the finely chosen collaborators. Occasionally I thought that some short instrumental tracks in a row could have been melted into one entity, just for convenience.

Of the vocal tracks I want to mention Phil Naro's short opener 'The Simple Life'; even shorter 'Dark Tower' and its longer brother 'Mystery Man' (both sung by Blake Carpenter); two tracks, a long and a brief one, sung in Finnish by Timo Rautiainen who's best known from the Metal genre but whose voice is here happily free of Metal clichés (those lyrics are by Matti Kervinen of PAX ROMANA); plus the longest and admittedly the best track 'Moaning Lisa' featuring lyrics and vocals of SEAN FILKINS. Indeed, if you feel there are uninteresting fillers, why not plan your own favourite edition (50-60 minutes) of this extremely well produced album. Four stars easily deserved!

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