IQ
Tales From The Lush Attic / The Wake

This is also the story of an artistic trauma and a difficult collective journey towards a partial rebirth. Tons of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, of course, and Jimi is always Jimi, but in my teenage years, I was primarily a happy lover of progressive music, immersed in the light of astonishing and abundant masterpieces and never satisfied with symphonic openings, ambitious arrangements, chiaroscuro, dissonance, odd times, and whatnot. (A delight, between Italian and foreign discographies). It's useless and painful to recall, but in the short span of a few seasons, we were left orphaned in millions, orphaned of an entire musical genre on early retirement or sold to airplay, subjected to public ridicule and reduced to clandestinely trading bottom-of-the-barrel scraps, B-series snippets, and rare bootlegs (here I thank my friend M. – aka Gnuvo – who nevertheless printed many during that period).

The collapse didn't last long, however: five or six years. Around 1983, the artistic revival of progressive music had become noticeable, to the great joy of those who had kept the flag flying despite everything (among the artists, I would at least mention Eloy and Enid), and the names of brave bands that dared to defy the ban by taking on European stages were widely circulated: Marillion, of course, Pallas, Pendragon, Deyss, Twelfth Night and especially, as far as I'm concerned, IQ.

IQ has the characteristic of coming closer than any other neoprog group to the sounds and style of Steve Hackett's solo albums, especially ‘Spectral Mornings’. The style of the keyboards and guitars is similar, achieving an instrumental balance that even Genesis did not want to achieve (at least until ‘Wind And Wuthering’) and that in Yes has always been ‘contaminated’ by Steve Howe's folk/ragtime components and Wakeman's pronounced classicism. Keyboards that are enveloping yet never ‘intrusive’, and a very present guitar accompanied by beautiful, round and deep bass sounds and precise rhythmic geometries, while Peter Nicholls' voice closely resembles the mature and shrill Gabriel of ‘Back In N.Y.C.’. A band capable of appealing even to fans of 80s sounds, thus, despite a 100% progressive musical vein and the predictable tendency to compose pieces usually lasting from eight to ten minutes or more. (Fortunately, there are always people willing and able to do so).

‘Tales From The Lush Attic’ (1983) and the subsequent ‘The Wake’ (1984) are the best fruits of the English quintet, among the most balanced and mature products of neoprog, and were regarded at the time for the masterpieces that they objectively are. Immediate references were found in the music of Genesis and Yes, especially keeping in mind ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’ and ‘Going For The One’, but IQ immediately proved to possess a particular balance between the typical emphasis of the genre and the restraint required by the 80s scenario without deviating an inch from the very proud progressive canons. To say: the first album includes a 20-minute suite and two tracks of 14 and 7 minutes, not exactly radio material. It is true that IQ immediately proved very capable of producing even more ‘light-hearted’, ingenious, and entertaining pieces, such as the famous ‘Corners’ or the playful reggae-prog contamination ‘Barbell Is In’, and the band's legendary attitude to not take themselves too seriously and never get a big head (despite their relative but immediate success) is equally known, but all this only confirms the maturity of a formidable band that does not intend to succumb to its sudden myth nor to the excessive prolusions, musical and mental, which have always risked stifling the spontaneity and freshness of progressive musicians.

In short, within a couple of years, IQ delivered to prog history no less than a dozen memorable tracks, including two important outtakes later included in the digital editions of both albums. Epic and classic ‘Awake And Nervous’ and ‘Outer Limits’ (the latter among the best prog tracks of all time), long and structured ‘The Last Human Gateway’, ‘The Enemy Smacks’, and ‘Widow’s Peak’, but all the tracks collected in the two albums are remarkably fine and personal. They are said to have all been more or less written and arranged since 1982, which explains the substantial stylistic identity of the two releases (more elaborate ‘Tales’, a little more dry and polished ‘The Wake’). Now I should say that it's certainly not romantic rock, considering the undeniably rock tenor of the compositions, but it is also romantic rock, for the beauty and frequency of the arpeggiated and introspective inserts. Mysterious and evocative atmospheres intersect with the rocking march of the impeccable rhythm section, always endowed with a fine, full and round bass, a drumming of notable technical thickness, and a guitar that often indulges in very fluid solo interventions, all while the tracks revolve and change under our ears in a beautiful kaleidoscope of expressive keys. As for Martin Orford, I adore this keyboardist perfectly capable of playing ‘a la Wakeman’ (‘The Enemy Smacks’) but also of subtly painting atmospheres and suggestions without taking over, instead enveloping the magic of the voice in a style that overall much resembles that of Nick Magnus of the Hackettian court.

After an interlocutory and too concise live album, IQ would gift us with another couple of excellent albums before losing themselves in a series of recordings still at a very high level, but decidedly less ingenious and immediate than those of the 80s. No shadow falls on them and a progressive faith carried on with intelligence, talent, and inspiration, but it is also evident to the most sentimental fans that their best production definitively dates back to that dazzling three-year period in which millions of lost children rediscovered a musical and contextual family. We knew it, the Archangel had predicted it (‘...Lord of Lords, King of Kings / has returned to lead his children home / to take them to the new Jerusalem...’) and with these two masterpieces, as well as with the albums of the other artists mentioned above, the rebirth in the progressive Word was happening.