CRYSTAL TEARS - A Servant Still CD-EP

The title track opens proceedings as a song ensues that's led by piano, with a slowly moving, chunkily percussive backdrop, topped by organ, almost unnoticed guitar and deep bass, the backing now accelerating to mid-paced and more solid. Above all this, the lead vocals of Neil Martin bear uncanny similarities to the late Richard Wright of Pink Floyd fame as this wonderful song rolls along with the same air of emotion, optimism and uplifting wistfulness that bear all the hallmarks of many of the songs on Wright's “Wet Dream” album, as a decidedly airily gorgeous song hearkens back to the more laid-back, solo offerings of Floyd members Wright and Gilmour. “People Make Mistakes” is slower, introduced with grand chords from the piano as a phased vocal leads the song forward, then, with a more solid piano chording, crisp guitar and deep bass, the vocal could almost be Rick Wright, the same rich texture, the same pitch and the same air of love lost and found, chances taken and missed, on a song that's as wondrously emotive as it is high-flying and fragile, the textural detail of the instrumentation perfectly placed yet never intrusive as the song charts its languid yet purposeful, Floydian path through heady choruses and yearning verses. Finally, “Sensitive Friend” ends things with a similarly sounding vocal as swirling, slow-motion piano backs the light and airy Wright-like voice, on a song that slowly moves ahead with tenderness and warmth, adding and subtracting assorted instrumental textures along the way, to eerily gorgeous effect, sometimes orchestral, sometimes delicate, always tasty and always emotionally charged. The song eventually solidifiews in a wave of rippling piano, slowly chunky drums, deep bass and rising vocals, once again almost like a contemporary answer to anything off that first Wright solo album. All in all, it's gorgeous stuff that can't fail to win your heart and your head, effective, enjoyable and repeat playable – and you can't say fairer than that!!
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