Progressive Rock
Giant Electric Pea · 21 August 2026
«Maybe All a Dream» takes a film-score-style intro before anyone comes in, and it’s still got a good eight minutes of ground to cover after that. It opens an eight-track record arriving six years and six albums after the band’s 2019 debut, with the line-up unchanged: Ted Leonard on vocals and guitars, John Boegehold on keyboards, Dave Meros on bass and Jimmy Keegan on drums.
The material is more open than on previous records. «Jade Sky» brings in brass and strings over a rhythm section that never moves from the spot, and «Traveler on the Wrong Road Home» adds a festive, South-American-flavoured trumpet that’s later answered by a string section. In the middle sits «Things I Don’t Do», the record’s shortest track, with vocals, piano and some very low-volume backing harmonies and nothing else.
«Break Away» carries the record’s progressive weight, with changes of character that never lose the thread of the melody. The lyrics run considerably darker than the music carrying them suggests, and that’s hard to catch until the second listen.
The pace of output catches up with the record by the end. «Slowly Falls the Flying Man» drags on out of momentum and piles up sections without any of them demanding the next, and «I Dream the World» closes with a ballad that simply stops, with no gesture to justify being the last word. Sixth album in six years with the same quartet: you start to sense where each move is coming from before it arrives.
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Guillem Cardós