Hello everyone, welcome to the Spirit of Cecilia Progcast #2. Tad Wert and I host, and we’re thrilled to feature music by The Flower Kings, IZZ, Lifesigns, Tin Spirits, Kevin McCormick, The Tangent, Nosound, NAO, and Airbag. Enjoy!
SOC Progcast #2
Tag Archives: IZZ
Spirit of Cecilia Radio Progcast 1
This is the first of our Spirit of Cecilia Radio Progcasts, episode one–featuring music by Big Big Train, The Flower Kings, Galahad, IZZ, The Bardic Depths, Kevin McCormick, NAO, No-man, Wobbler, and The Tangent. All songs used by kind permission of the artists/labels.
And, with the fiery and enthusiastic commentary of Dave Bandana, Brad Birzer, and Tad Wert.
Among our topics: how much we miss David Longdon (RIP); if the Flower Kings are diverse in their musical offerings; if disco can be prog; just what the number 42 is about; if The Tangent simply rocks; what kinds of instruments Wobbler uses; how McCormick, NAO, and No-man owe something to Mark Hollis of Talk Talk; and just how much we love prog.
Enjoy!
Spirit Of Cecilia Takes On The Most Dangerous Woman In America!
Brad: One of the lead singers of the incredibly good and powerful prog band, IZZ, Laura Meade, has just released an incredibly good and powerful art rock album, The Most Dangerous Woman in America.
From its opening moments with a couple singing on the Seine to its closing notes of deep melancholic reflection, the album just moves and moves and moves and continues to move. Indeed, if there’s any flaw, the album is simply breathless. Or, rather, the listener is breathless at the end of each listen. There’s just so much going on, and Meade has one of the single best voices in rock today. This, of course, is a great thing, and even after ten to fifteen listens, I’m still utterly captivated by the music and the story. Driven by piano and bass throughout, The Most Dangerous Woman in America sounds like little else, though I hear echoes of Tori Amos and Talk Talk and some 1980s style atmospherics.
Whatever it borrows from others, though, this album is a work of unique genius.
Exactly who is The Most Dangerous Woman in America? Meade never reveals, and, far from being frustrating, the mystery of the identity of the lead singer continues to intrigue, listen after listen. Given the lyrics, this must’ve been a Hollywood celebrity. But, whether she was an actress or a director or producer (or all three) is unclear. For now, I’m happy to keep guessing.
By wisely keeping the identity of the protagonist quiet, Meade has created something more akin to myth and allegory than to story and narrative. Afterall, there may just be many possible dangerous women in America, women who once ruled the world but were soon forgotten.
Tad: Brad, thank you for putting this album on my radar; I wasn’t aware of it, and I am a big IZZ fan!
According to Laura’s official site, the album is about a woman who took a brave stand, and paid a price. In her own words,
“There have been so many people throughout history – many of them women – who stand up for themselves, stand up for what they believe in, and experience great pain and suffering for doing so, their memories and voices lost along the way to gossip and rumor. I hope that this album, in some small way, honors and gives voice to the forgotten.” (From http://www.laurameademusic.com/about.html)
John Galgano, bassist for IZZ, collaborated with Laura, and I think that accounts for the emphasis on that instrument. Like you, I love Laura’s voice; thankfully, she does not sing in that faux-innocent folkie style that dominates pop music these days. Laura isn’t afraid to use her impressive range of voice, moving from hushed to full-blast power in the space of a few bars.
While the album gets off to a slow start, in my opinion, the patient listener is rewarded with the extraordinary closing quartet of tracks: the title track, “The Shape of Shock”, “Forgive Me”, and the brief “Tell Me, Love”. “Forgive Me” is the song that I keep coming back to, with its exotic, almost middle-eastern feel. Its melody spirals up and up with unrelenting force, like a modern “Kashmir”. It’s definitely the highlight of the album for me.
IZZ’s last album, Don’t Panic, was one of my favorites of 2019, and Laura Meade’s The Most Dangerous Woman In America is a worthy successor. It has certainly brightened my 2021!
Here is the video for the first single of TMDWIA, “Burned At The Stake”:
Passion Incarnate: IZZ’s Half-Life (2020)
Well, let me admit, immediately and without hesitation, I’ve been a huge fan of IZZ since I first heard them a little over a decade ago. In everything they do, they combine passion, taste, and elegance. One might even describe their music as an earnest intensity. Lyrically, the band never dumbs itself down, but offers words of majestic inspiration and serious contemplation.
Their latest release is an EP, appropriately and rather cleverly entitled Half-Life, itself comprised of three new tracks and one live track. The three new tracks—entitled, in order, “The Soul of Music,” “Into the Sun,” and “Half Life”—offer grand progressive visions, reflecting, respectively, IZZ’s deep appreciation and love of Kate Bush and Chris Squire and Yes; Rick Wakeman and Big Big Train and ELP; and, perhaps most interestingly of all, Stranger Things(the Netflix series) and Kansas and Glass Hammer.
None of IZZ’s appreciation of other progressive rock acts gets in the way of that uniquely beautiful IZZ voice. Indeed, such appreciation on the part of IZZ of other bands only makes IZZ all the more interesting, honed, and glorious. And, just in case it might seem like the music overwhelms the listener, the lyrics simply soar, especially on “Half Life,” bringing the listener to the verge of tears in the last several second of the track.
The final track is a rather stunning live rendition “The Weight of It All” from the band’s Ampersand, Vol. 1, album.
In this current whirligig of viruses, protests, injustices, and anxious unrest, do yourself a grand, grand favor—treat yourself to the humane, cultivated, and class act that is IZZ. Your soul will thank you.
[To support IZZ (and for a mere $5), click here: https://izzmusic.bandcamp.com/album/half-life-ep]
Those Awkward Teenage Years – The 2010’s, pt. 10: 2019
Well, we’ve reached the end of the decade, and the end of our retrospective. Whew!
2019 proves that prog rock’s current renaissance is showing no signs of slowing down. We finish this decade with another year providing a surfeit of wonderful music. I’ve picked 11 representatives from 2019 for your listening pleasure. Here they are, in alphabetical order.
Big Big Train went for the big ideas on this one. It’s loosely based on the concept of a “grand tour” that educated Europeans took in the 1700’s and 1800’s. They manage to pull together such disparate topics as St. Theodora, the poet Shelley, and the Voyager spacecraft. Believe it or not, it all works!
Both Manuel Schmid and Marek Arnold are in Cyril, and I recently wrote a review of their excellent 2019 release, The Way Through. It’s about a man who has a near-death experience, and the struggles he has to overcome to reunite with his earthly body. A great prog effort!
This supergroup just gets better and better. On their third album, Flying Colors branches out into a diversity of styles, and come up with one of the best of the entire decade. “Last Train Home” is my favorite, “Geronimo” is funky blast of fun, and “Love Letter” sounds like a lost Raspberries classic.
In Continuum is another Dave Kerzner project that rose from the ashes of a planned Sound Of Contact reunion. It is a concept album about an alien who falls in love with a human, before Earth is scheduled to be destroyed. Kerzner recruited the cream of the crop to play on this, and it is a fine addition to his already impressive resume.
Izz released one of the most enjoyable albums of 2019. “42” is about Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier. While “Age Of Stars” features interweaving vocals and a driving beat. Their previous album, Everlasting Instant, was good, but Don’t Panic has more focus and confidence.
Goofy name, amazing music! These guys sound like a hybrid ska/prog/new wave band with an incredible vocalist. They have terrific playing chops, and their ability to switch styles mid-song makes my head spin. I found them via Tony Rowsick’s indispensable Progwatch podcast, and you can’t beat them if you just want to have something fun to listen to. “Captain Awkward” is a great track to start with, if you’re curious.
The Neal Morse Band pick up the story where Similitude Of A Dream left off. In this installment, the son of the protagonist from Similitude must battle his own demons and find salvation. I actually like this album better than Similitude, because there is more variety in the songs. There are so many good ones, but “Vanity Fair” really stands out.
Since Pattern-Seeking Animals consists of current and former Spock’s Beard members, you would expect this to sound somewhat Beard-like. However, the Pattern-Seekers come up with their own individual style that sets them apart. Ted Leonard is excellent on vocals and guitars, and John Boegehold steps up and takes a more visible role. “No One Ever Died and Made Me King” is the key track.
Often a much-loved album doesn’t make a positive first impression on me. That was the case with Bruce Soord’s (The Pineapple Thief) second solo album, All This Will Be Yours. On first listen, it is an unassuming set of songs, softly sung by Soord over a bed of mostly acoustic guitar and murmuring electronics. However, the more I listen to it, the more I am taken by it. “One Misstep” in particular is an engaging tune, with a mournful melody as Soord sings of his determination to make a broken relationship whole. As a matter of fact, I like this record better than the Thief’s much-acclaimed Dissolution, which was also released this year.
This was the biggest news in progworld in 2019 – after more than a decade, Tool reunited and recorded this massive groove-laden record. All of the songs segue into each other, and the result is almost trance-inducing. I was not a huge fan of Tool’s early work, but I love this one. Maynard James Keenan seems to be rejuvenated these days (as last year’s Eat The Elephant illustrated), and that is good news.
After recording several albums with his Devin Townsend Project, Townsend decided to go solo for the highly personal Empath. Once again, his patented wall-of-sound production is in play, and his incorporates choirs, strings, and guitars. Lots of guitars. Devin can be inconsistent, but Empath is one of his best.
And that completes our look back at the decade from 2010 – 2019. There were some exciting new artists that emerged, like Damanek, Evership, Perfect Beings, and Southern Empire, while veterans like Big Big Train, Gazpacho, Glass Hammer, Katatonia, and Neal Morse released some of the best music of their careers. Several surprise reunions bode well for the future: it was great to see Kino, A Perfect Circle, Tool, and Slowdive back in action.
I hope this series of posts inspired you to check out somebody you may not have been aware of, or go back a revisit an old musical friend. If you are interested in hearing more prog news and music, check out the podcasts ProgWatch and The Prog Report. Both are excellent resources for learning about and hearing new music in progworld.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy New Decade!
IZZ–42, The Universe, and all that
If there’s a rock band more criminally ignored than IZZ, I have yet to encounter it. To give you an idea of the sheer sonic glory of their new album, imagine the perfect follow-up to both GOING FOR THE ONE and DRAMA, and you’d come very close to discovering the glory of DON’T PANIC. And, throw some classier King Crimson and ELP in as well.
Admittedly, I’ve been a fan of IZZ for years now, but this album even took me by surprise. I knew it would be more than solid when it arrived on my doorstep, but I had no idea just how much of a ride I was going to get.
I could follow those bass lines to Neptune and back.
One of the single best aspects of the album is simply that the band clearly loves making music—music as a thing in and of itself as well as music as a communal activity. There’s joy perfectly meshed with seriousness on this album, and the band never shies away from proclaiming its love of . . . well, love. Few albums more distastefully destroy cynicism than DON’T PANIC. Even the very title is calming in a hyperkinetic, uplifting way!
Squire-esque bass lines, unusual but harmonic rhythms, and complex vocals really define the album, musically. Yet, it all works; it’s all gorgeous.
Don’t let the Yes comparison above throw you off. There’s no doubt that the members of IZZ love Yes and probably learned much of their craft form the English-prog rock gods. But, IZZ takes the Yes vibe into a whole new realm, especially in the interplay of male-female vocals.
I really didn’t think the band could top their previous trilogy (which inspired me to say my rosary more often than not—no joke) and John Galgano’s solo album, REAL LIFE IS MEETING, but DON’T PANIC is the more than worthy successor to all of the previous efforts. Now, I have to convince myself to be content with this one for a while, because, frankly, I’m already eager for the next one.
Patience, Bradley, patience.
Spirit of Cecilia 
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