British songwriter/musician BRUCE SOORD summed his long-running prog/pop band the PINEAPPLE THIEF up with last year’s 3000 Days. Someone Here is Missing is chapter one in the next volume. Two things are immediately noticeable. One is the record’s sizeable debt to PORCUPINE TREE – long an undercurrent in Thief music, but overt here thanks to the quiet/loud guitar dynamics and the melancholic vocal melodies. Two is the larger amount of electronic textures that crop up frequently in the songs’ arrangements, giving a lot of the tunes a modern sheen. Tthis gives the Thief some color, though Soord is often at his best when he strips the tracks down to the basic four instruments and puts as few barriers betwixt himself and the listener as possible. Tunes like “Wake Up the Dead” and “Barely Breathing” are strong enough to hit the runway with only minimal makeup. That said, “3000 Days” and “Preparation For Meltdown” benefit from the gussied-up treatment, so there’s clearly room for a variety of approaches. Someone Here is Missing still isn’t the knock out of the park of which Soord and the Pineapple Thief are clearly capable, but adding more tools to the box nudges the band closer to an out-and-out triumph.
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