Liam Singer’s second album overflows with beautiful piano playing and the album’s tone is frequently gorgeous, but he doesn’t do much new with his classical style and his efforts have little overall effect. The album works best as dinner music, albeit the type that’s forgotten as soon as the meal is digested.
Most of the instrumentals would work as the soundtrack to some melancholy film, but they aren’t differentiated enough on their own to be particularly engaging or memorable. "The Hero, the Cube, and the Flower" as well as "Left Ventricle/Tone Clusters" are nice, but take so much from the Philip Glass playbook that all they need is some chanting in Hopi to make them complete. While earnest, Singer’s voice is a little too precious and naïve for my taste and becomes annoying after a while. He has guest operatic vocals on three travelogues spread throughout the disc, the latter of which is my favorite, but there’s not enough of an implied narrative to make these as worthwhile as they could be.
Although abounding in talent, this album lacks the drama implied by the title and the secret, whatever it may be, lies forever in its watery grave.
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