Short Reviews [Various Artists - 2023 - "Songs for an Angel [Tribute To Eric Bouillette. Volume 1]"]

Eric Bouillette was a multi-instrumentalist best known for Imaginaerium (his project with Clive Nolan and Laura Piazzai), Nine Skies, Nova Cascade, Drifting Sun, Solace Supplice, The Room and others. He lost his battle with cancer last year, which unsurprisingly led to a large number of his friends and bandmates wishing to mark his passing. This is the first of two albums (the second was released last month) and is subtitled ‘Tribute To Eric Bouillette - Vol I’. I never spoke with Eric, and only know him through his music, but there is no doubt he was a very fine musician indeed, and from the outpouring of grief it is obvious he was very highly regarded as a person as well. I have not come across many tribute albums like this with the prog scene, and the one which springs immediately to mind is ‘Mannerisms’, which was recorded after the death of Geoff Mann (again from cancer). That album, which has been released a few times, featured songs of Geoff’s from throughout his career reimagined by some of the people he had worked with, and was treated as a triumph with bands producing some outstanding pieces of work – Twelfth Night’s take on “Piccadilly Square” for example, is a masterpiece (available now on Bandcamp, nearly 30 years on, with extra tracks). There was an energy throughout that, as the bands strived to do the very best they could, showing Geoff’s legacy in its best light and is an album which I still play for sheer pleasure to this day. However, that is not what we have here. I get the impression that the vast majority, if not all, of the songs here have been written by those involved to demonstrate how much they thought of Eric and how much they meant to them. The result is an album where the songs tend to somewhat blur into each other, as they are all coming to the music from the same position, even though they are by different artists. For anyone who knew Eric in any sense, I am sure this is an incredibly moving release, and I can imagine a great deal of tears being shed while this is being played, but as I am slightly removed from that I hear this in a quite different perspective. That everyone is playing their hearts out is never in doubt, but some are just clunky as they have attempted to put all their feelings into a song, with “Our Man From France: by Steve Anderson and Chris York (who were both in the line-up of The Room which included Eric and recorded ‘Caught By The Machine’) being a case in point. It’s very clever, with lyrics which say a lot about Eric and his music, but it is missing the spark. There are some interesting performances here, but the overall result is something which is actually too personal, and although I am sure anyone who knew Eric will return to this often and relive their memories, this is not something which truly stands up in its own right.