Thursday 6 May 2021

Saga - Symmetry (2021)

The 22nd album from this Canadian band.

Saga is a quintet on this album with a lineup of drums, clarinet, keyboards, bass, guitars and vocals.

Why ?

That is my question when I listened to this album for the first time. Saga was my introduction to progressive rock forty years ago and I have been more or less a fan of them since the late 1970s. More or less. 

The band has released some great albums and some turkeys along the way. At their best, very few bands beats them in my opinions. I am listening to their great song Tired World from their debut album when I am now writing these lines and that song is up among the ultimate best of them in the pomp prog genre.

That song and many other great Saga songs is included on this "new" album from Saga. The difference between a best-of album and Symmetry is that Saga, which is Jim Gilmour, Ian Crichton and Michael Sadler from the original Saga + two other musicians, has made acoustic versions of these tracks and labeled it as a new album.

Acoustic and semi-acoustic versions, that is. Most of the electricity has been removed from the songs. When comparing their new version of Tired World with the original 1978 version of this song, most of the sparkling and fizz has been removed from this song. It is still a very good song, but not a superb song as the original song is/was.

That goes for most of the other great and superb songs here. The fizz has gone and the songs sounds a bit stale. Saga has also added some less great songs here from their long career and they do not sound that good.

I was a looking forward to new songs from Saga. What I got was a reminder who great band Saga is... by comparing the far better original songs with the songs on Symmetry.

I am still a life-long fan of Saga. But this album lack the sparkle and fizz I associate with Saga at their best. 

BUT it hard to argue against great melodies though and this is why I give this album a good rating. Simply because the melodies, no matter who much the sting has been removed from them, is great and i can therefore live with second rate versions of them and some duds/songs who is not among their great stuff.

But this is still for fans only as there is best-of and live albums there much more worthy your attention than this one.

3 points

 

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