Together We're Stranger

Accomplished but slow, Together We're Stranger further envelops the epic arrangements of its predecessor, Returning Jesus. The echo of Talk Talk shrouds this album in that the bouncy pop of such material as "Teardrop Falls" is now long gone to the extent you wonder if they'll ever revisit such terrain again. Like Talk Talk, No-Man have now become moodsmiths of the minimal and the epic. The title song is one of the stronger pieces, beginning with what sounds like a power tool. Twenty seconds later the piece opens to a wider sonic pasture which, over eight minutes, explores an emotional terrain which is very English (not that they've sounded like anything but over their decade-long existence). This is melancholic stuff with a sensual warmth. "The City in a Hundred Ways" is the recurring theme running through Stranger's only mid-paced song, "All the Blue Changes" to "City" itself — a mournful, clarinet-flavored piece leading into the standout and emotionally charged "Things I Want to Tell You"; the highlight of the album reveals itself in the two-and-a-half-minute electronic epilogue. Steven Wilson's academic musicality has studied the best parts of William Orbit's Pieces in a Modern Style with a looped cathedral-bell motif over wispy synth and crashing waves. The last three songs are acoustic-based tracks of which only the lilting "Back When You Were Beautiful" holds any No-Man traits; it was better done as "All That You Are."