Northern Crown – what a potent name, especially when coupled with an album title like The Others, and look at that great art to boot! I'm thus a little disappointed to report that The Others isn't chock full of stunning prog rock madness but instead subdued and brooding. It's an album that has strong ideas but poor execution. It feels too repressed, a tad too limited, a sort of negative reflection of what space prog can be. Northern Crown certainly have the potential of a much stronger band, I just wish that they had pulled together enough to create something truly engaging and not just an album that far too often feels like all of the boring parts of Hawkwind mushed together. I know that sounds harsh but I feel obligated to speak the truth. I've spent a lot of time with this record too – trying to pick apart what it is that I'm missing, and yet time and time again I find myself coming up empty, simply puzzling over the simple anarchy of the music.
I don't like merely casting records aside. After all – it's true that the music on The Others isn't usually my sort of thing. When it comes to spacey music I like Hawkwind, a few other seventies bands and that's about it. I have a hard time digesting an album worth of it. Northern Crown have only just started to master the ebb and flow needed for this kind of music to truly work – and quite frankly they aren't psychedelic enough. I feel like Northern Crown are trying really hard to create vast and conceptual music and for whatever reason I'm just not getting it. I feel like there are moments on The Others that border on brilliance, but no matter how hard I try I can't truly get into them. If you're looking for tripped out spacey music then you are in the clear. The issue is moreover that this kind of music just so often isn't good. It's the music that gets lost in the pedantic bullshit that makes this entire scene so boring.
I'm not sorry I reviewed Northern Crown, I spun the record a handful of times and there are definitely moments that I enjoy. The band clearly has a lot of potential. Their compositions are filled with a low key majesty but they have yet to truly develop it. There is a certain quiet poetry about The Others, one that manifests itself after repeat listens and finds its way through the booming magic that Northern Crown can invoke. The Others is the sort of record that I'm curious to revisit in a year and see if I can understand it better. It's the kind of record that fills me with lots of weird and deeply personal questions, but I really don't know what it will mean for me in the future, or for you for that matter. Music is like that – and if an album can help you through these questions, even if it isn't the greatest, then why not spin it?
Score: 5/10
