Saga
House of Cards

The cover of Saga's first album of the new millennium is particularly creepy yet fascinating: the alien man/insect, a sort of mascot for the band as it appears for the fifth time on the cover, is drawn in the foreground, intent on observing the nearest of the hive cities towering above the mist of an unknown planet (perhaps Earth itself, in a distant and unsettling future?), swarming with its kind in flight.

The abandonment of sound experiments and attempts to ride down the latest, precarious musical trends benefits the band more than ever, as they elevate the year 2001 with one of their most successful and consistent works of good, solid pomp rock, dynamic and brilliant. The suboptimal sounds and the relative compositional vein of the previous work "Full Circle," released in 1999, are effortlessly surpassed by this collection of songs with a regal sound, less electronic and more vintage (kudos to producer Jim Chricton, bassist of the band) and above all thanks to sharp and varied songwriting.

There is even a super single, which in a less unjust world should have topped any international pop chart and not just peeked into Canadian (the band's homeland), German, and Swedish ones: the easy-prog gem is called "Money Talks" and features a catchy chorus, not by chance placed right at the beginning of the track and generously repeated throughout the four minutes of performance.  

Besides the appeal of this number, the whole album is filled with great choruses, starting from the opener "God Knows", which charges with typical bouncy rhythms under the verses, one of their trademarks, dwells in an arpeggiated bridge and then lyrically unfolds in the refrain with all (quasi) mellotron, filled with beautiful chords.

In a similar way, but with even better results, develops "Always There". This time, it is Michael Sadler's beautiful voice that becomes intriguingly tense in a subdued prologue before exploding into the wondrous chorus, one of those half-pompous and half-pop moments that fans of the quintet (here's one) experience with a lump in their throat.

"The Runaway" instead recycles the more spectacular and pyrotechnic side of Saga: it starts with a bang with a puffing locomotive and Ian Chricton's big guitar that takes no prisoners. For over five minutes, everything happens, stop&go, guitar/synth unisons, furious bass pedals, whimpering solos full of vibrato lever, resonant brass carpets: a classic concert track, less melody but more fun and pure exhibitionism, without going overboard.

"Once in a Lifetime" smells of full restoration, with a melody that has the aroma of their early records from the late seventies, rhythmically sustained by the acoustic guitar but infused with the magnificent keyboard sounds that, proudly, this band continues to use, experiment with, and develop: the quintet makes it a habit to take the stage with ten (10) keyboards! I believe they are the only ones, in these computerized times, to do it: six for master Gilmour, two for Jim Chricton ready to jump on them leaving the bass to Sadler, and the last two for the singer himself (who unfortunately left the band a few years ago)… it seems like Korg's demonstration room, but it's Saga, a band that adores synthesizers, uses them very well without making plastic music, and still has in its ranks a guitarist who is a devil and hits hard towards hard rock, fueling the delightful and peculiar hybrid, to my taste exceedingly satisfying, joyful, and fun, which is their strength.

"We'll Meet Again (Chapter 15)" is another typical Saga-song: it begins with the powerful staccato of Jim Chricton's instrument, which then moves aside and changes to more rounded sounds to let Sadler sing, but soon regains center stage by drawing sinuous scales and rapid triads of plucking. Six minutes that fly by.

The other "chaptered" song, "Ashes to Ashes (Chapter 11)", instead has a more ethereal and dark setting, freeing almost angrily Michael's booming refrain above the enveloping keyboard carpets.        

Regarding the assignment to phantasmagorical chapters of these two songs, an explanation is necessary for those (the majority) not familiar with Saga's affairs: from the beginning of their career, a transverse concept was designed across their discography, developing eight chapters in as many songs in the first four albums (two each) and resuming and expanding the project with three new chapters in the 1999 album and another two in this "House of Cards."

This… transverse saga finds its conclusion in the subsequent album to this one, titled "Marathon," with three final tracks for a total of sixteen chapters. The theme linking it all has much to do, inevitably, with science fiction, an environment for which the sound of this Canadian band seems tailor-made (apart from and beyond the covers). I promise to be more detailed on the next occasion.