(Virgin)
Herald rating: ***
Review: Russell Baillie
Even if its cover doesn't come with a sticker saying that this is the other band for Maynard James Keenan, singer for American art-metallers Tool, you can bet it's still going to be snapped up as if it were the latest instalment from his day job.
Of
course, side projects for rock frontmen - especially ones as distinctive as Keenan, with his unearthly, whisper-to-a-scream, swooning style - are always going to have trouble distinguishing themselves.
But A Perfect Circle, which started as a studio collaboration with guitarist/tech Billy Howerdel and has since grown into a touring band, does show the singer howling at a slightly different moon.
It's generally a less brooding, more melodious affair than Keenan usually produces during Tool time. Though its recurring pattern of thoughtful acoustic pickings swinging in and out of churning electric riffage, combined with Keenan's lyrical biblical, mythological and fairytale allusions, rather amusingly recall the days of 70s prog-rock - quick, memo the soundtrack department, Lord of the Rings.
Thankfully, for every moment that has you worrying about Yes or the Moody Blues comparisons (as on the jangly Orestes) or even early Queen (Thinking of You), it can still rattle the brain Tool-fashion (as on the Smashing Pumpkins-ish Judith; the raga-metal of Sleeping Beauty). And it has moments where all that melodrama turns majestic (3 Libras could be Jeff Buckley from the dark side of the force).
So, a Tool album when you're not having a Tool album? Not quite, considering its fine line between cosmic and comic. But you can't help but admire its grand eccentricities and intensity and that Keenan is just the chap to put some art back in the charts.
