More than most other genres, I think prog rock and metal have the keen ability to capture the feeling of season and their changes. Some prog projects focus on nothing but this, but regardless bands that choose that sort of these for songs or whole albums just sound a certain way through their tones, scale usage, and tempo. Ellesmere certainly smacked of a bit of that before with prior projects like Wyrd which I reviewed over four years ago, but it seems to have been stepped up a few notches here with Stranger Skies along with the overall breadth of progged-out instrumentation and world-building.
Ellesmere still sees Roberto Vitelli (bass, keys, songwriting) at the helm of the project, but just like Wyrd there’s a number of prolific lifers when it comes to prog rock performance including some returning ones like Mattias Olsson (drums), Tomas Bodin (more keys), and John Hackett (flute) with additions like David Jackson on saxophone and wind instruments, Giacomo Anselmi on guitar, and Riccardo Romano on backing vocals and 12-string acoustic guitar. Speaking of vocals, for lead we get John Wilkinson on vocals which, if you heard a Genesis influence with Ellesmere‘s music before, Wilkinson’s voice will definitely drive that comparison home as he sounds like a pitch-perfect take on Phil Collins’ legendary English croon circa their Wind & Wuthering LP.
The result is Stranger Skies feeling like the adventurous album it’s set up to be, probably better than Wyrd and I loved that album. Six tracks here, the first four of which capture the cold of a winter-stricken world with an approachable whimsy. It doesn’t feel like an oppressive kind of cold, it simply colors in the world in a specific way with tracks like “Northwards” and “Tundra”. “Northwards” for its part is a wonderful intro to the album and to what Ellesmere has to offer nowadays which feels compositionally tighter than previous work at the natural expense of more variance in the tracks. This is fine for me! This is still progressive rock through and through, and there will of course be moments of movement and progression even within songs of average length. This one for example has a triumphant and explorative opening with tons of charm from robust horns and other orchestral touches – it’s like the opening sequence of a fantasy movie – and it gives way to stately ’70s-styled prog rock replete with the sounds of synths, rock guitars, and Wilkinson’s evocative singing. From: https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/ellesmere-stranger-skies/
