A Cause In Distress – In Search Of Spring (2023)
After its prime time in the early to mid-70s, progressive or prog rock has been in the dog house for many music critics and fans. Practically every artist that could fit within the genre, from not-so-famous like the Egg to the superstar ones like Pink Floyd and Yes were lumped there. The main argument, which could have certainly been applied to some of the prog artists, is that they were quite pretentious and that they were only trying to be complex out of complexity sake. But then, by the mid-90s, time did its things, the music got re-assessed, and with the advent of Radiohead and that band’s redefining of more melodic aspects of prog rock, the whole genre began getting back in vogue.
That is where we are now, the genre fully reinstated and artists feeling free to combine melody with more complex musical structures without being chastised for it. So here comes A Cause In Distress, an intriguing Southend duo, and their debut album In Search of Spring.
Picking up cues from Radiohead and their love of Pink Floyd, but at the same time including elements from the likes of Nine Inch Nails to Depeche Mode in ten tracks that seem to have no problem with combining melody with complexity with the dark overtones and rhythmic angularity of the likes of Joy Division and A Certain Ratio. Basically, A Cause For Distress can cover decades of music here without sacrificing or really copying anything. In many ways, their dark-toned lyrics fit the music they are set in quite well with the duo’s Liam Watkins noting:
“Always looking forward toward a metaphorical Spring, despite the negative winter that we can live with. The mind can mend, the ice will thaw, and the flowers will bend towards the sun once more.”
So what do have we with A Cause In Distress and their In Search Of Spring? Essentially, it is an interesting and well-developed search for musical complexity that has both a head and a tail and bears a promise of even better music to come.
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