Review Summary: An epic album with a clear, well-narrated concept.
Tinyfish is a progressive rock band from England that, despite general critical acclaim, has a fairly meager following. The Big Red Spark is their second full-length album.
However, it's a slight misnomer to call it a concept album. While the majority of the album is taken up (and indeed, overshadowed) by the Great Red Spark suite, there are a few stand-alone tracks as well. The Great Red Spark suite describes the construction of a massive machine built from a human's imagination that allegedly would solve all of the world's problems.
The greatest strength in this album is, most definitely, the use of spoken narration throughout. The voices of the speakers, Rob Ramsay and the father of Simon Godfrey, are very rich and appropriate to the characters they are meant to represent. The music complements the spoken words extremely well, being reminiscent of radio dramas and even Peter and the Wolf.
That doesn't mean the band does not rock out, though. After the introductory track plays Rainland, which serves as a brilliant opening piece, drawing the listener in with intense, skillful guitar hooks. Speaking personally, the choral hook in Rainland was lounging in the forefront of my head for well over a week, and it is expressed through leitmotif later on in the suite.
That being said, the musicians never allow their technical skill to get in the way of the songs and the concepts therein. As far as concepts go, this is one of the more balanced that I've experienced; neither the music nor the concept become overwrought throughout the entirety of the suite.
The closing song, Wide Awake at Midnight, is a bit of an odd duck, being the only track (sans bonus DVD, featured in the initial print) outside of the Big Red Spark suite. Still, it's a very good 10-minute prog epic.
It's a pity that Tinyfish self-identifies as "the world's smallest progressive rock band". They deserve far more than that.
