EP review: THE MANGOES – Pale Blue Dot

September 5th, 2021 by jason

www.themangoesband.com [Release date 19.07.21]

The Mangoes are a pop-rock duo formed by Tim Morse (vocals, keys) and Bret Bingham (lead vocals, guitarist, bass, keys, drum samples) in 2014 and conceived as a song writing collective.

This new EP is as Bret explains “In general, the concept was inspired by the existential musings of Carl Sagan and his observation that ‘The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.’ The extension of this is to look outward, beyond our myopic viewpoints, and realise that each of us is a very small part of something much larger.” Tim continues, “I see the album as a song cycle with ‘Pale Blue Dot’ as the starting and ending point, it is the fulcrum of this music. All of the other songs are vignettes about people and events that take place on the ‘Pale Blue Dot.’”

‘Mystery’ is a masterful piece of pop flavoured prog complete with a 70s sounding keyboards solo. ‘When The Sky Fell Down’ has a little bit of Beatles in it, whilst ‘Hypnotized!’ sounds like one of the Broadway inspired tunes Dennis de Young used to pen for Styx back in the day. They seem to pack a lot of good music into the three and half minutes of this song.

They also cover ‘Free As A Bird’, the song released by the surviving Beatles in 1995, based on a song written by John Lennon back in 1977. Pretty faithful to the original, right down to the George Harrison/Jeff Lynne style guitar solo.

Impressive melodic/pop driven progressive music, similar at times to early Hogarth Marillion or Yes (the latter no big surprise as Tim was a member of a Yes tribute band and written a book about the band). Worthy of your time tracking this down for a listen. ***1/2

Review by Jason Ritchie

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