Man Overboard

Built around the powerhouse pipes of vocalist Deborah Conway (who would further indulge her fondness for the dramatic on Pete Townshend's 1989 rock opera The Iron Man), nearly everything about The Happiest Place in Town sounds equally large. The bass-drums-guitar trio behind Conway matches her intensity with blasts of funky rock that manage to be both muscular and consistently tuneful, augmented nicely with occasional brass. And Conway tackles big issues, offering perceptive takes on matters of the heart ("Adultery") and bashing the usual musicianly targets (suburban life, racism) to far less effect. A bigger concern is the band's perhaps-inevitable temptation to overdo things; "That Hanging Business," featuring braying blues harp in addition to Conway's most over-the-top performance, is a low point. Yet for all the emphasis on size, the title track, a gorgeously wistful ballad, closes the disc with a perfect demonstration of why bigger isn't always better.

Deluxe eight disc (six CD + two NTSC/Region 0 DVDs) in artbook pressing. Broken Skies - Outspread Wings is the extensive, detailed sequel to Premonitions (2015) and covers the years 1984 to 2006 in the production history of legendary former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett. The albums were all remastered in 2018 and often offer various bonus pieces. In addition to the albums Till We Have Faces, Guitar Noir, Darktown, Feedback 86, To Watch the Storms and Wild Orchids, this includes a superb Roger Dean (Yes, Uriah Heep) painting ennobled artbook…

Young Gifted & Blues CD compilation contains 15 tracks featured by The Strypes, Ginger St James, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Krissy Matthews, Danny Giles, The Mentulls and more.

Dreams are an essential part of the musical world. Despite having been firmly involved in Sweden's highly fertile prog rock scene in the '70s, Roine Stolt (Kaipa, The Tangent, Transatlantic) was still harbouring dreams of maximum creative fulfilment when he arrived in the '90s, guitar in hand and a head full of sublime musical ideas. The end-result was a solo album, 'The Flower King', which struck such a resounding chord with a small but growing number of prog fans around the planet. It also proved to be one of a handful of albums that helped to kick-start and underpin a worldwide resurgence for adventurous, symphonic rock music that is still gaining momentum over two decades later. You can find the proof of what happened next within this lavish, generously proportioned box set containing the first half of The Flower Kings' extraordinary catalogue of immersive, immaculate studio albums…

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music.
This was the breakthrough album for Kansas, lyrically and musically it´s hard to beat. The album opens with "Carry On Wayward Son" which I´m sure almost everyone has heard!