Title: Skilled musicians lack personality as a unit.
Review: I wanted to like Spock's Beard -- confess; who doesn't get a little tired of spinning their old Yes and Genesis CDs over and over again -- but if this CD is a reasonable presentation of SB, then I must respectfully pass. The band has chops to spare, and Neil Morse's vocals are serviceable, although most of the lyrics he's singing are dull-to-embarrassing. (Yes had the best answer to prog-rock lyrics: just string together a bunch of words that sing really well.)There are some memorable ideas here and there, but they're smothered by the arrangements: the band seems intent on changing time and direction every 10-15 seconds or so, which makes their compositions sound frantic and scattered. And there is no distinctive sonic profile at all, with all of the musicians displaying skill but no individual personality.Ultimately SB sounds like a somewhat unusual LA session band, a more pretentious version of Toto. Not was I was after.
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