Squackett — A Life Within A Day
The album features nine tracks in all, and these have a run-time between three minutes, and six & a half minutes- so no real lengthy prog work-outs here. The nine tracks have fairly varied pace/ feel taking in modernised/ produced hints of dreamy Beatle-ness, Led Zeppelin Kashmir like marches, muilt- layered male harmony vocals, a few jazzy hints & a few more folk touches. But the big stand-out element here is Hackett’s highly accomplished guitar soloing, which is weaved in & out of all the tracks- yet the soloing is never allowed to go too wild & unbalance the songs AOR/ prog pop structures.
Really this does often feel very much like a Hackett solo release, with little of Mr Squire present here beyond his bass work, harmony vocals & the odd lead vocal part. The only real track here that felt fully Squire-like is “Aliens”, which rather brought to mind late 80’s or early 90’s Yes at their more dreamy….though I felt a certain Mr Anderson's voice should have be heard instead of the mix of Hackett & Squire.
The version I reviewed of the album was the double disc hardback book edition- which features the album in standard cd form & a DVD. Sadly the DVD just features a 5.1 surround mix of the album, which does nicely open up the albums sonic textures, through it would have been nice to have maybe some studio footage or even a documentary about how the project came about ect. The 11 page booklet features: a brief single page introduction on what the pair were trying to achieve with the project, a few colour pictures of Mr Hackett & Mr Squire, and lyrics for all the nine songs.
Really how much you enjoy “A Life Within A Day” is down to what your expecting- if your after 70’s prog with a slight modern edge you’d best look else where…say Yes’s 2011 album “Fly From Here”. But if you’re after well produced, virtuoso played mixture of modern prog, AOR, and pop…this could well be for you.