PORCELAIN - ...As It Were. Here And There.

7 songs
45:34 minutes
***** **
(DIY)

Bandpage

Coming from a small town located on the west coast of Finland, Porcelain consist of seven musicians who were born at least ten years after the last wave of progressive rock ebbed away. But that doesn’t deter them to pay tribute to a genre that was loved and hated but hardly left anyone indifferent from the late Sixties to the mid Seventies.

Their self-released debut album ...As It Were. Here And There. comes with seven lengthy tracks amounting to three quarters of an hour. The authentic warm sounding production sets you right from the start into an era when fairies and pixies inhabited the lyrics of convoluted songs. The emphasis of the young Finns’ music is on the guitars, but the keyboarder also works hard to enhance the retro feeling. Inspired by old bands (Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, Camel), but also contemporary ones like The Mars Volta, Anekdoten and Porcupine Tree (none of which sound particularly modern to me), Porcelain come up with compositions between five and nine minutes that all share a common denominator of jam band flair. It should be noted that instead of losing after the first few tracks, Porcelain actually sound more inspired on the second half of the album.

While the band’s instrumentalists do a proper job (although the violin plays a lesser role) without ever reinventing progressive rock, it’s Charlotte Kerbs’ vocals that stand out but might very well be considered an acquired taste. Her strong and self-confident performance is sometimes too much in the foreground, especially when she is screaming her lungs out of her chest, but overall it helps to set the band apart from likewise artists. No matter how familiar things may seem at times, it’s next to impossible to compare them to any one specific band. Instead you get a potpourri of everything fancifully proggy from the early Seventies.

Standing only at the very beginning of their career, Porcelain can pride themselves in having recorded a really good first longplayer, promising more wonderful things to come in the future. ...As It Were. Here And There. is a charming first sign of life that fans of playful British progressive rock of the pre-punk era might fully enjoy.