NEKTAR – Mission To Mars

Deko 2024

NEKTAR –
Mission To Mars

Thinking big on a concept level but keeping it brief in regard to an album scope has always been this ensemble’s forte – demonstrated with style and gusto on their early classics "Remember The Future" and "A Tab In The Ocean" – so a possible finale of the band’s five-decade long journey should fail to curb their vigor. Spinning fast when looking into their past while slowly letting go of their future as a touring entity, is how the veterans position themselves in the present, on “Mission To Mars” which they started working on during lockdowns, in 2020, and wrapped up in 2023, after the collective’s original drummer Ron Howden passed away. Still, though the follow-up to 2022’s "The Other Side" features, alongside another founding member, bassist Derek Moore, and guitarist Ryche Chlanda, who was part of the 1978 line-up and rejoined in 2018, three younger musicians, that’s exactly what they needed to refresh the group’s method yet remain true to the modus operandi their fans are so familiar with.

Without crossing a 33-minute barrier, the four spectacularly streamlined mini-epics on offer – if combined, they don’t reveal any thematic thread, apart from the subject of peaks and non-desolation valleys, but, if separated, don’t shine as brightly as they do together – feel panoramic and compact at the same time, all thanks to the quintet’s age-defying energy. Whereas lesser mortals – or, indeed, those obsessed with mortality – would go for drawn-out instrumental passages the troupe’s chosen genre may seem to require, these players prefer to focus on the second word of the “prog rock” signifier and derive a lot of pleasure from it. From the moment Mo’s earth-splitting four-string rumble and Jay Dittamo’s deliberately unsophisticated beats launch the bluesy title track onwards, to the acoustically driven “I’ll Let You In” which brings the album to a triumphant close, there’s hardly a moment wasted on showing off, the absence of redundant flourishes compensated by Ryche’s guitar riffs and Kendall Scott’s organ figures.

The entire ensemble’s tightly packed vocal harmonies can fathom, and sway, whole stadiums, yet the band don’t try and measure arenas, because time and space simply vanish in the shadow of boogie here, even after intense licks and chords abate to allow some cosmic magic to dissolve sonic attack in solemn solos. So once the scintillating “Long Lost Sunday” introduces soulful balladry to the platter’s flow only to see Chlanda’s voice soar to the atmosphere through effervescently funky refrains before synthesizers dance across stereo channels to bring forth impressive dynamics, a riveting blend of heaviosity and delicacy, the listeners will become aware they’re well on a trip to the point of no return. It doesn’t matter, then, that “One Day Hi One Day Lo” swells with orchestral grandeur, for both the busy bottom-end and the sparse melodic lines at the top create a singular emotional and existential expanse in which anthemic choruses, highlighted by Maryann Castello’s pipes, unfold into a series of mesmeric perspectives and self-contained shifts of tempo.

A spiritual, life-affirming and full of joie de vivre, work, “Mission To Mars” is a fantastic, celebratory entry to the venerated ensemble’s wonder-rich catalogue. And did they say this entry launches a trilogy of albums? Eh?

*****

January 17, 2025

Category(s): Reviews
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