Beardfish Sleeping in Traffic: Part One

Although progressive rock's popularity peaked in the '70s, it continued to enjoy a cult following in the 21st century - and one of the noteworthy prog rock bands that came out of Europe in the 2000s was Sweden's Beardfish.
Sleeping in Traffic: Part One (2007) is Beardfish's third album, but the Swedish outfit's first for a major progressive rock record label, namely InsideOut. Even though the album went by rather unnoticed, prog rock fans should take note of it. Beardfish do not break new ground, but their take on the genre has a lot of balls and feeling. Blending an occasional Gentle Giant influence with a strong Genesis background and a deep-running blues basis, the group is particularly successful in the melody department, without devolving into ersatz melodic hard rock. In other words, these Swedes strike a very fine balance between prog complexity and sincere feeling…

Från En Plats Du Ej Kan Se (From a Place You Cannot See) is Swedish band Beardfish debut album. It´s a retro prog rock album with that special Swedish touch that a band like The Flower Kings also posses. Beardfish is a bit more simple in their approach to the genre that the elaborate compositions of The Flower Kings. This doesn´t make them any less exciting though. There are both songs that are sung in Swedish and songs that are sung in English on Från En Plats Du Ej Kan Se.

You might know Rikard Sjo¨blom as the mutli-instrumentalist madman behind the microphone of the now-legendary Beardfish, who sang about everything from personal loss to dreams of sneaking into the backstreets of some sleazy '70s disco club…