Paint A Picture 1973

"Fantasy’s Paint a Picture is an album you will enjoy at first listening. 45mins of very song-oriented melodic prog rock with decent keyboard arrangements (mostly hammond), decent guitar work, good texture and very good vocals. The main problem with this album is that it won’t grow on you beyond that, no matter how many times you’ll listen to it. Partly this is because of Fantasy’s plain songwriting which if on the one hand creates very listenable songs, on the other hand it takes away depth from their music. Partly, this is because of the general lack of originality in Fantasy’s music especially considering this is a 1973 album (CRESSIDA sounding like the most obvious influence to me).

Nevertheless, this is still a good album, and I very much enjoy listening to songs such as Paint a picture (melancholically driven by nice vocal harmonies over a texture of acoustic guitar and Hammond), Circus (beautifully played all through, with well crafted dynamics, a decent guitar solo about 2mins into the song and great vocals), Politely Insane (Fantasy almost turning hard prog with this little uptempo gem), or The Widow (short sad song with acoustic guitar, cello and piano forming a nice background for the vocals harmonies). The second half of the album is much more ordinary and forgettable than the first half, and at parts it gets quite boring (e.g., Thank Christ , Gnome Song ).

Overall this is a very decent effort which has its good moments and is definitely worth a listen."