Kayak - Night Vision (2001)

Tracklist:
1. Icarus
2. Miracle Man
3. Cassandra
4. A Million Years
5. Water for Guns
6. The Way of the World
7. Hold Me Forever
8. Tradition
9. All Over Again
10. Life Without Parole
11. How
12. Carry on Boy
13. Good Riddance
14. Rings of Saturn

Still Kayak, yet different – 7/10

After a very successful comeback it’s hard to hold on to that line of success, especially when you just changed vocalist. Really, for the first album after a success you need some good ideas to at least compensate for the lack of familiarity in sound. After all, the addition of second guitarist and backing vocalist Rob Vunderink, who also featured on the previous live release, also gives a whole new dimension to Kayak, and a whole different sound. Well, the ideas are present, but they’re not half as good as they should have been. Yet I don’t understand one thing of it. When I look at the tracks there’s always something positive to say for each track, yet as an album it doesn’t work. On this record, Kayak sounded a lot less like Kayak by sounding real solid and sometimes even heavy. Alright, now they got two guitarists they need both of them to play something, and there are two different vocalists in the band, so it’s not very surprising this sounds all different. The name Night Vision suits the album very well, as it might be Kayak, but looked at through night goggles and thus sounding different.

Night Vision begins with “Icarus”, a track somewhat like “Close to the Fire” as they both open with 8-minute mid-paced epics with their somewhat mysterious atmospheres. “Icarus” is a good way to open this album as well since it shows us some well-composed progrock and some powerful vocals by newbie Heerink. The piano (and later synth) accompaniment sounds a bit stressful and knowing what will happen to Icarus in the myths there an excellent attempt at making the lyrics come alive. Somewhere in the middle the song collapses a little and falls into a depressing and sad prayer for Icarus not to fly to close to the sun, which is again a great lyric-theme-cooperation. “Miracle Man” is a mid-paced heavy song and a pretty dragging one. Place a heavy guitar underneath the song and you’ll get a downright metal song. It’s a pretty killer track but sounds very unlike Kayak at any point. Again there’re sad and depressing breaks after each chorus, and don’t worry, we’ll see more of those on this album. There are a few ballads on the album that don’t really stand out and are thus labeled as filler. Under this category fall “A Million Years”, “All Over Again” and “How”. All three are good to hear, but none of them will get stuck in your head. Fourteen songs after all is a lot and obviously do not contain solely diamonds. However, ballads like “Cassandra” and “Hold Me Forever” have a lot more character, thus resulting in at least one of them being played live in later years.

We return back to rock ‘n roll songs with fast-paced tracks such as “Water for Guns” and “Life Without Parole”. The former stands out with its great contrast between verse and chorus; swinging staccato in the verses and chaotic symphonic rock in the chorus, where Rob Vunderink grabs a piece of the lead vocals. The latter of the two features a good guitar riff and a light atmosphere with again Vunderink sharing lead vocals with Heerink. The two voices do sound very well together. Lesser rock songs turn out to be almost total failures, such as “Good Riddance” and “The Way of the World”. While I really don’t mind brass being added to rock music, they do, believe it or not, totally ruin the kickass ambience a good rock track has. Both these songs suffer enormously from the addition of brass, albeit synthesizer-fake brass. Apart from that, the songs are not very nice either. In the middle of the album Pim Koopman presents us with another 8-minute song called “Tradition”. The guitar riff is downright awesome and the song itself turns out to be among the better ones on the album, if only the depressing break would’ve been omitted. The “boy wants girl, girl wants boy”-part is not very bad in itself, but it returns quite often and there’s actually not a valid reason for the song to last 8-minutes. In “Carry on Boy” and “Rings of Saturn” we see catchy and AOR melodies we would have never thought Kayak would write, or record. Funny enough, I like them. The melodies are somewhat catchy and cheap, but they are cheerier than most of the album’s ballads and carry a positive ambience with them. They are unique for Night Vision.

Having given these descriptions, I don’t think this is a bad album at all. Sure, it’s not Kayak the way you are used to them (with exceptions), but that’s no reason to discard this album. I would definitely recommend this album to those interested, unless you are getting to know Kayak for the first time.

Strongest tracks: “Icarus”, “Miracle Man”, “Water for Guns” and “Tradition”.
Weakest tracks: “How” and “All Over Again”.