Touchstone Reissues

Touchstone

Touchstone is probably one of the hottest names in modern progressive rock and, with their style that blends the artistic sensibility of lush progressive rock with the edge and power of metal music, they received praise upon praise from both reviewers and fans alike for last year’s The City Sleeps. This year sees the reissue their back catalogue in enhanced formats, and thus the EP Mad Hatters (2006) and the two full lengths Discordant Dreams (2007) and Wintercoast (2009) are once again available to the prog loving public.

While quality characterizes the music on all three reissued releases, it is nonetheless interesting to note the musical development of the band from Mad Hatters over Discordant Dreams to Wintercoast. While the talent, the skills and the ideas are there on Mad Hatters, it strikes me as somewhat of a shaky start perhaps because of the slightly thin production and the melodic and pleasant, but quite constrained lead vocals. Compared to Mad Hatters, Discordant Dreams is a vast improvement. Or, well, perhaps “vast improvement” is an unfair description, and it is perhaps better to say that all the talent that was already present on Mad Hatters is really given free reign on this album, resulting in some very strong and dynamic tracks with a tighter production, a tighter performance and a much more pronounced lushness. Tracks like ‘Discordant Dreams’, ‘See the Light’, and ‘Shadow’ are outstanding tracks that perfectly balance the melody of modern rock, the sophistication of prog rock and the edge of metal. While Discordant Dreams is good, Wintercoast is brilliant and nothing less than a modern progressive rock/metal masterpiece, in my opinion. Looking at the musical progression throughout the three releases, one could even say that, Wintercoast is the inevitable masterpiece that Touchstone had been working their way towards. Tracks like the massively epic Wintercoast’, the uplifting hard rocker ‘Strange Days’ (my favorite Touchstone song of all time), the lush-but-heavy ‘Joker in the Park’, the slightly retrospective prog rocker ‘Voices’, the oddly funky ‘Zinomorph’ and the beautiful ‘Solace’ document a band who have gone from being skilled musicians to being geniuses. Really, all the songs in this album are spectacular, and Wintercoast rivals several of the classic progressive rock albums. One oft he main advantages this album has over the two other releases is that Kim Seviour is given the role as the primary vocalist. On Mad Hatters, she provides mainly background vocals, while she and Rob Cottingham split the vocals between them more or less equally. Her voice is clear, clean, very expressive and definitely one of the defining features of touchstone’s original sound.

Each of the reissued releases also feature a number of live tracks documenting the band’s live performances. The live tracks are very well performed, showcasing Touchstone’s tightness as a live band. I do not know if this is enough bonus material for somebody who already owns these releases to go out and buy the reissues (unless one is a completionist collector, of course), but, in any case, the reissues are still warmly welcomed as Mad Hatters and Discordant Dreams were quite difficult to find in some parts of the world. If you’re not familiar with the music of Touchstone, I would recommend that you start with Wintercoast before exploring Mad Hatters and Discordant Dreams.

Touchstone reissues: Wintercoast (left), Mad Hatters (middle), and Discordant Dreams (right)

Review originally posted at Sea of Tranquility.