To paraphrase Talking Heads/David Byrne – and you may ask yourself, what is a gentle acoustic ballad doing on a website like this. Well…
This isn’t just any old ballad – an original original written by Jeff Wayne and best known for being performed by Justin Hayward of Moody Blues on Wayne’s musical version of War of the Worlds (enough to make your head spin). “Progressive rock” and “space disco” tags may sound hilariously wrong when applied to this particular song, but it is this specific arrangement by Allister Thompson that brings out far more psych/space elements than the original. Its also notably sadder/bleaker than Wayne’s song as well, making it sound less of a disco and more of a kind of a song you’ll find on one of the early 90s albums by My Dying Bride, Anathema or Tiamat.
Visuals for this cover made me think of aforementioned metal bands (more specifically – Gaia by Tiamat as well as the Wildhoney album). In many ways its a continuation of theme started in the video for Spirit and just about as gorgeous with the only difference being there’s not much snow this time around. Autumn music for autumn times, if you will.
Barren Land by Allister Thompson is coming in October
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