Arrows & Anchors

A band with progressive views

It is not that easy to attach the Texas-based hard rockers to any of the existing styles. For their so far short-lived career, the band has already showed the audience that you can hear on their CDs anything that to this or that extent has relation to rock music. There are even those who dare say the magic word progressive, speaking about this quintet, which is a loudest signal to all those who love intellectual and complex rock music. What is certainly taken by Fair To Midland from progressive is the liberty of musical solutions, while instrumental skills still fall short compared to the best masters of the genre. The band has long kept the audience waiting for new material; and news about a fresh record coming up in summer 2011 were greeted with ultimate warmth. Fair To Midland’s fans expected nothing but a perfect effort, considering their previous long player, Fables From a Mayfly (2007), which demonstrated how good the musicians had grown. The new release is not going to bring anyone down. Arrows & Anchors, the latest product from Fair To Midland, is a collection of fifteen tracks amounting to almost an hour.

A commonwealth of genres

The record is clearly created on the basis of the predecessor, which is no wonder. The mosaic of heavy metal, progressive and hard rock, and even folk, at first sight, or rather listen, produces no distinct image. If you happen to try only some of the tracks and be doing something else during the process, you may feel that the band pursued only one goal and that is confusing the listener and making a mixed-up-of-everything something without an idea or story. Here we come to another parallel with progressive, which is so desirable for Fair To Midland themselves. You have to listen to the entire record, emerging into it and forgetting about everything else. Then, you will not find it weird, strange or wild that the pipe in the intro Heavens To Murgatroyd is followed by the icebreaker Whiskey & Ritalin, a true entertainer to all those who like to bang their heads to loudest of metal. After that, you enter one of the band’s top songs ever, Musical Chairs, a mid-tempo majestic piece with an unsurpassed chorus. Later on the album, Fair To Midland do their best to repeatedly show you their affection to experiments. In the crazy, nearly cacophonic Rikki Rikki Tavi, they put together thrash metal guitars and dance rhythms. IN Amarillo Sleeps On My Pillow, amidst the hard rock spaces, you hear the careless sounds of banjo. The most gripping thing is that despite their unlikeness, the songs do not spoil the stylistic unity of the whole album.

On their way to perfection

It would not take a genius for Fair To Midland fans to conclude that Arrows & Anchors is far ahead of everything else the band has done before, by its execution and content. Each musician took the most out of his abilities to make each new track bear the group’s trademark sound, to load the record with as many memorable melodies as possible, and to make every instrument a phenomenon. Tracks like A Loophole In Limbo, Golden Parachutes, and The Greener Grass are not only powerful songs, but a result of a great labor performed by professionals who know how and where to grow. Although the Fair To Midland music has got significantly heavier with the bass getting lower, solo growing more complex and riffs marching straight from the realm of metal, the floating keys on the background and the tenor of the vocalist faithfully guard the slight psychedelic feel that was originated on the very first album of the band. This is not yet a perfect work, because there are still mistakes here a more mature band would have prevented. This refers, for example, to the total number of the tracks some of which are pretty mediocre here and do not contribute anything. However, it is clear that Fair To Midland are big master of their craft and have a good idea of where they should advance in the future.