Sea of Brass

It’s a lovely collection showing the band’s evolution while acknowledging the songwriting that made its name. It’s also unabashedly stuffed with gooey strings and all manner of dopey Broadway musical-style cheese. Indulgent? A little, but that’s part of the fun.

While it may be too easy to reach for the word "cinematic," it can't be avoided. [Dec 2015, p.104]

There are undeniable moments of beauty (the radar-bleeping beginning of “A Light Above Descending” is lent a lovely, watercolour quality by its gentle horn accompaniment), and the live cuts tend to fare better than the studio recordings, imbued as they are with a tangibly excitability. It’s irrefutable though--much of Sea of Brass (by which I mean both the studio album itself and its associated extras) does feel bloated.

The brass in question swells and sways capably throughout, but ultimately feels like window-dressing, never fully delivering the arm hair-raising crescendo that one would expect from an army of cornets, trombones, and euphoniums, though this is mostly the fault of the source material, which ultimately lacks the structural boldness with which to support such finery.

While the studio album underwhelms, the concept takes off on the live versions available on the four-disc edition.