Music Street Journal - Music News & Reviews

Matt Dorsey Let Go Review by Gary Hill While musically, not everything here is a slam dunk under progressive rock, this is billed as progressive pop rock. Additionally, there are some guests who have some serious prog pedigrees. Those people are Marco Minnemann (drums on three tracks) and Jonathan Mover (drums on three) and Dave Kerzner (keyboard solo on one piece). Beyond that, Dorsey does everything here. There are definitely some songs here that do qualify as progressive rock. There is enough progginess on the rest to fit it under that heading. Whatever you call this, though, it's a potent disc. This review is available in book (paperback and hardcover) form in Music Street Journal: 2023 Volume 2. More information and purchase links can be found at: garyhillauthor.com/Music-Street-Journal-2023.

Track by Track Review

Castles Made Of Sand A cool piano arrangement gets the album started in rocking fashion. It builds out in some cool ways from there. This takes on a cool AOR prog sound by the time the vocals join. The track works through a number of twists and turns with some killer sounds at play.

Compromise More of an AOR prog concept is on the menu here. This is perhaps more mainstream than the opener was. It's no less effective, though. For some reason this reminds me a bit of Squackett.

Waiting For The Fall This is a harder rocking tune. It has some great energy and some intriguing changes. The dropped back section brings the first real hints of prog to the piece, but the instrumental break that explodes from there has the most decidedly prog stuff we've heard by this point. It's on fire with some killer keyboard work.

Man More energized and rocking, the bass playing on this is positively incendiary. This is up-tempo AOR prog that's on fire. It also has a killer keyboard dominated instrumental movement further down the road.

Impossible Friends The timings and instrumental concepts here are very prog-oriented. This has a more modern progressive rock sound to it, but also lots of world music reference points, particularly Spanish guitar. This is not quite a ballad, but it's also not a rocker. It is also one of the most evocative and effective pieces here.

Echo I really like the vocal arrangement on this a lot. The tune has a decent energy, landing as sort of a lushly arranged melodic rocker with some prog tendencies.

Let Go The bass work on this definitely makes me think of Chris Squire. The track is a high energy prog rocker that again makes me think of Squackett just a bit.

Dangerous The closer has a bouncy sort of groove to it. This isn't the proggiest thing here, but it has some proggy angles at points.

Return

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
© 2024 Music Street Journal Site design and programming by Studio Fyra, Inc./Beetcafe.com