Mile Marker Zero 2024
Coming Of Age
To connect to the spirit of maturity, Connecticut neo-prog collective curate miniature miracles which showcase the growth of togetherness.
With just three studio albums issued in almost two decades since it all started, this ensemble know how to make each of their records count, yet the New Haven quintet don’t make what they do seem too precious. Arriving on the cusp of the band’s anniversary and following up on their 2021 concert release, the pieces which form “Coming Of Age” should only emphasize the strength of such an approach – only there’s much more going on here in order to strike a perfect balance between ambitious art-rock and relatable emotions. How else may one react to the “Wait, how did we get here?” line if not with wonder, while wonders on offer are plentiful.
As most of the numbers on display dance across the seven-minute mark, these feelings have a lot of space to unfold, once short opener “A Time In Place” establishes the album’s vibrant vector via an a cappella passage and subsequent piano ripple that take the listener to the shore where melodies come to roost and wait for hope to emerge. And it will emerge – in the nervy, handclaps-abetted blend of raga and funk of “Best Is Yet To Come” which invites the audience on a spiritual trip through the suburban stir-craziness of the otherwise arrestingly nostalgic “Towns To Grow Up In” and towards the “You’ve grown up” coda of the platter’s title track – synth-pop-influenced, dynamically multilayered, effects-laden mini-epic demonstrating a flamenco-like lace for a solo before turning explosive. With Dave Alley’s tremulous voice showing the way and John Tuohy’s six-string flight lighting up the big harmonies-filled skies the band’s songs try and embrace – most apparently so on the acoustically tinctured “Bizarre” where Mark Focarile’s ivories and Jaco Lindito’s bass engage in a throbbing effervescence and Doug Alley’s drums drive tribal riffs to wuthering heights – their images create a vertiginous panorama.
There’s immaculate logic, then, in “Heavy Days” trading initial jazz-chamber ambience for metal-fusion and sculpting organ-bolstered assault that will dissolve in a folksy ballad and then solidify afresh, with vigorous, anthemic uplift. And though “Far From Here” tends to adhere to progressive standards instead of pushing boundaries, the cosmically transparent, delicately questioning “End Of August” brings the record’s flow to a close in an elegant, albeit not overly elegiac, manner. A mature work.
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