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Flicker: How Much Are You Willing to Forget

Progressive Rock

5.0/5.0

Website (BandCamp) Facebook Twitter
Independent / Unsigned
by Craig Hartranft,  04.19.2013

British modern progressive rock band Flicker is not so modern. The band stands in the best tradition of classic English melodic progressive, channeling the early greats like Genesis, Pink Floyd and Marillion. Actually, Flicker has some connection with the last band as they developed out of the same town, Aylesbury.

Flicker:: outdoors, thanks to PhotoShop.

Their debut album, How Much Are You Willing to Forget, is a lush, atmospheric, and sometimes haunting recording. Some of this comes from the combination of wistful synthesizers and ethereal vocal arrangements. You hear this within Counting Time and My Empty Head. The latter injects an equally hunting guitar line to make the arrangment even more delightful. It's also an example of how Flicker has borrowed pages from Genesis and Floyd.

While most of How Much Are You Willing to Forget is smooth, melodic, and wistful, Flicker can get a bit heavier as in the latter half of Falling Down and the beginning of My Empty Head. There's a rather bombastic up turn at the end of Breatheless, but that's basically the extent of the band's flirting with heavier prog. The closing song, Is This Real Life, is stark contrast to these three songs consisting of sparse vocals and elusive piano over a quiet symphonic arrangement.

Frankly, if this is the future of modern English progressive rock, to take cues from the past to make terrific music in the present, then the future is bright and Flicker is at the forefront. This is a band to watch. How Much Are You Willing to Forget is easily recommended.

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Flicker's How Much Are You Willing to Forget offers delightful and entertaining melodic prog rock in the best classic English tradition.

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The Powell Payne project, created in 2022 is the collaboration of Mark "Penfold Powell (ex-drummer of Psycho Kiss) and Adam Payne (former vocalist of Airrace). With guitarist Adam Davies and keyboard player ... [ Read More ]