Pineapple Thief

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Pineapple Thief - 137

Artist:	Pineapple Thief
Title:	137
Label:	Cyclops CYCL 106
Length(s):	71 minutes
Year(s) of release:	2002
Month of review:	[09/2002]

Line up

Bruce Soord - guitars, vocals, keyboards, samples, programming
Adrian Soord - mellotron, fender rhodes, prophet 5, piano, synths
Nick Lang - drums, percussion, backing vocals
Mark Harris - bass

Tracks

1)	Lay On The Tracks	4.44
2)	Perpetual Night Shift	5.27
3)	Kid Chameleon	6.56 MP3 or RealAudio
4)	Incubate	3.28
5)	Doppler	7.33
6)	Ster	4.05
7)	137	5.09
8)	Release The Tether	5.09
9)	How Did We Find Our Way?	3.54
10)	Preserve	5.44
11)	Warm Me	3.36
12)	Pvs	11.29
13)	Md One	3.48

Summary

This is Pineapple Thief's second album. It is usually regarded as a hobby project of Bruce Soord of Vulgar Unicorn.

The music

Lay On The Tracks is the opening track. It opens with friendly strumming acoustic guitar, twinkling keys, peaceful, peaceful. The singing is typically British (not so strange for a Brit), a bit on the hazy side. The music then gains in pace and gets to the quite heavy, bouncy and vibrant. I am thinking of King Black Acid here. The song does not yet have the appeal of some of my favourite KBA songs, but they are cutting it close.

Perpetual Night Shift has smooth echoey ahhhs and is rhythmically quite modern. One of the things about Vulgar Unicorn and this project is that they try to incorporate recent music into progressive rock in the same way that Porcupine Tree is trying. The latter band is also the main reference if you want to learn what Pineapple Thief is like. It is ewasy to float away on this song on which we later hear choral keyboards combined with something reminiscent of Greek music.

Kid Chameleon is typical British rock in Porcupine Tree style, lots of details, lots of variation. Wonderful. Later the music winds down for some still acoustic guitar and doubled vocals. Incubate is a more straightforward rock track with a catchy chorus and jumpy rhythm guitar.

Doppler is again in a more PT influenced style with a somber intermezzo. The transitions are again well-done and the acoustic playing is beautiful. After Ster, we come to the echoey and spacy 137. At first the song has a definite lone desert feel, later its gets to be more raw, edgy and angular almost King Crimson like.

Release The Tether features a flute while How Did We Find Our Way? and Preserve are in a style now already familiar. Warm Me is a bit noisy and has a certain Buggles feel, possibly becuase of the vocals. For the rest: many strings and a beautiful piano.

Pvs is by far the longest track on the album going from a long dreamy beginning and the combination of Fender Rhodes piano and percolating acoustic guitar to a loud hallucinating rock part reminiscent of Led Zeps Kashmir. Wow. The slumbering intermezzo sounds like breathing.

Md One is mainly acoustic playing with some very strong melodic material.

Conclusion

Before I wrote my final thoughts on this album, I read Bollenberg's review of the album in iO Pages. He was extremely enthusiastic, and my impression at the time was one of scepticism, but I have changed my mind in the mean time. This is in fact a huge step forward from their debut album (or am I simply warming to their sound?). Great melodies, songs and plenty of atmosphere make this a good place to look for all you Porcupine Tree devotees.