Pendragon - 1990 - The Rest Of Pendragon

Pendragon 

1990

The Rest Of Pendragon

01. Saved By You 4:03

02. Lady Luck 4:52

03. Chase The Jewel 5:56

04. Elephants Never Grow Old 3:27

05. Red Shoes 4:17

06. Searching 3:33

07. Contact 3:22

08. Fly High Fall Far 4:51

09. Victims Of Life 6:56

10. Dark Summer's Day 5:57

11. Excalibur 6:29

12. Fly High Fall Far (Recorded Live At The Marquee Club) 4:23

Tracks 1 to 4 from Saved By You

Tracks 5 to 7 from Red Shoes

Tracks 8 to 11 from Fly High Fall Far

Track 12 previously unreleased

The Rest of Pendragon compiled three Pendragon EPs - Fly High, Fall Far, Red Shoes, and Saved By You - and contains mostly non-album tracks (although the title track from Saved By You featured on all but the earliest versions of Kowtow, and the tracks from Fly High, Fall Far also appeared as bonus tracks on some versions of The Jewel and 9:15 Live).

The album presents the EPs in reverse chronological order, which gives a nice sense of returning to the roots of the band - appropriate, given their rediscovered neo-progressive direction on The World, which came out in the same year. At the same time, the sound is remarkably consistent for the time period covered - yes, the first few tracks are poppier, and the last few tracks are proggier, but all the songs represent the sort of prog-pop fusion which Pendragon emphasised in the 1980s. It's also pretty much the last gasp of that approach before the band would return to a style based firmly in the neo- prog genre. While it isn't strictly speaking an excellent album from the perspective of a prog rock fan, it's more representative of this side of Pendragon than the schizophrenic Kowtow. I'd never recommend it as someone's first Pendragon purchase, but I wouldn't steer people away from it either.

Released in 1990, at the time of their great ´comeback´ album The World, this compilation is really a bunch of songs released only as singles, b sides or EPs put together in one package. While none of the stuff here can be said of being essential to the prog collector, it is still a very nice set of shorter songs that shows how good Nick Barrett & co are at writing catchy songs with great hooks.

Strangely, the track list here is reversed: the last single of the 80´s, Saved By You is the opener, while their first EP they recorded (before their debut album, 1985´s The Jewel) is the last (plus a live version of Fly High, Fall Far as a bonus track). While I was not expecting much, some songs did make a strong impression on me when I heard these tunes: ok, the long, dreamy and very progressive stuff that made them famous is not here, and yet there are pretty strong tunes with nice and unusual guitar and keyboards parts like Elephants Never Grow Old, Chase The Jewel and Lady Luck. The most progressive pieces are from their four-song debut EP, very good. Some surprisingly rocking/popish stuff like Red Shoes and Saved By You are here, as well as a couple of simple, but effective instrumentals (Contact, Excalibur), the latter showing how important was Steve Hackett´s influence in Barret´s playing.