Motorcycle

Rumors of breakup had swirled around Daniel Amos since the mid-'80s, and early press on Motor Cycle indicated that it would be the band's final recording. Though time proved those assertions false, Motor Cycle would have been a gorgeous note on which to end a career. Meticulously crafted, haunting, and beautiful beyond words, Motor Cycle is a psych-pop tour de force. Terry Taylor, Jerry Chamberlain, and Greg Flesch's triple guitars sparkle and weave lazily between one another as mellotron, piano, and vibraphone gurgle up behind them. Taylor's storybook lyrics are perfectly suited to this Never-Neverland music, and he spins nursery rhyme stories of little girls ("Noelle"), crippled saints ("Grace Is the Smell of Rain"), and fantastic dream worlds ("My Frontier"). The whole record is as ethereal and haunting as mist, as if the band had rewritten Fearful Symmetry using organic instruments instead of synthesizers. Rather than standing as separate entities, the songs on Motor Cycle work together to sculpt a singular Salvador Dali landscape where mountains and stars melt and spill into each other. ~ J. Edward Keyes, Rovi