Review Summary: Here comes heaven...
At the turn of the 1990s, and nearing fifty years of age, Robert John Godfrey had been on his own for nearly six years. The Enid, disbanded in 1989, had been spiritually succeeded by the group Godfrey formed shortly after the Dominion concerts of 1988. Known as Enid, and later as Come September, Godfrey took the popular dance music of the times, and churned out two rather decent EPs before the group disbanded in 1991. Yet, Godfrey’s ambitions were not yet fulfilled with this dance music experiment. A few years after, and several failed projects later, Godfrey decided to revive The Enid with an entirely new line-up. Reformed in 1993, and as the sole founding member left, Godfrey took what he learned with Come September, and instilled a slight tinge of electronic dance music into the revived band. Gone were the amassed overdubs of guitars and textured synthesizers, and in its place, a far more beat-driven sound augmented with lush guitars and a reserved rhythm section.
Tripping The Light Fantastic was an odd album, even by Enid standards. Disregarding the new sound and the overhauled line-up, there was several inclusions of older tracks from the Come September era. However, with this in mind, the use of these older compositions was subtle and showed that Godfrey’s ideas from that particular phase of his life were still ever present. Salvaging said pieces were not only the greatest reason for this album’s existence, but were also the album’s greatest flaw. Four of the seven tracks on here in some way use fragments of previous Come September compositions, with the exception of
”Little Shiners”, which blatantly uses the melody of
”Silence”, a song from Come September’s debut EP
Half an Hour in the Jungle. By no means does this take away from the quality of these compositions, but markedly exhibit a lack of originality in Godfrey’s songwriting.
At first look,
Tripping looks
and sounds like a generic 90s progressive rock album – and it admittedly, exactly just that. The sound is quite dated, no thanks in part to the increased use of synthesizers and the archaic electronic sound Godfrey was aiming for with this album.
Opening track
Ultraviolet Cat howls and grooves along at a whopping eleven minutes, complete with the only vocals on the album by new member Max Read. The subdued vocalizations of “Here comes heaven” and other harmonies actually add to the piece, and don’t sound too out of place. Other songs, such as the title track and
”Freelance Human” leave an awful lot to be desired. The electronic style is greatly toned down and focuses more on the band’s overall chemistry as a unit at the cost of being less interesting than the portions of the album that lean toward a dance-influenced sound. The highlight of the album
”Dark Hydraulic” even has its flaws outside the dated sound. The song it was based upon,
”Reverberations”, was nearly a decade old, and was even redone by Come September into a subpar dance tune, known as
”E is 4 ****”, that dragged on for what seemed forever. Aside from that,
”Dark Hydraulic” combines the electronics of earlier tracks and the guitar-driven compositions into a fifteen-minute epic that implements sound bites of Adolf Hitler and Carl Jung that serve to dramatically build up tension to an explosive finale. At any rate, that’d be a fine way to end an album – except that’s there’s a ten-minute long track by the hilariously disgusting title
”The Biscuit Game”. Not only is the name incredibly unfitting, but so is the track. Six minutes of it is just a buildup to a rather disappointing ending that reprises
”Dark Hydraulic” and fades into a sound bite of Carl Jung that drones on for nearly three minutes. If there is a hidden meaning behind the sample that brings
Tripping The Light Fantastic to a pitiful end, it ended up being entirely pointless. That, or I failed to get the point that Robert Godfrey was trying to put across.
At the most,
Tripping The Light Fantastic was an interesting way to revive The Enid for a new generation by introducing an entirely fresh sound that contrasted greatly from the previous incarnations of the 1970s and 80s. The revamped band’s new sound was its greatest asset, as well as its greatest downfall. Where some tracks heavily relied on electronic beats, others showcased a more streamlined, guitar-driven sound. Because of the mish mash of ideas,
Tripping The Light Fantastic was more of a dud than that of an explosive comeback. However, it was a step in the right direction for a band that was back at square one yet again.
