Kansas

The Absence Of Presence INSIDEOUT

Latter-day Kansas are still able to surprise.

Like the poor, Kansas have, in some way, always been around. Here’s a band with a line-up more fluid than Yes when they were manoeuvring players in and out with all the grace of a lowerleague football manager trying to keep his job. Like Yes, though, Kansas have a handful of classic albums in their pocket and a few singles that will never leave some corners of American radio. They’re also a band who are making surprisingly good on the second act of their career.

In 2016 the scope and complexity of their ambition was made good in the sparkling The Prelude Implicit (even if the title made you scratch your head in consternation). Four years later they’ve done similarly good work in the expansive prog romp of

The Absence Of Presence. Admittedly it could have used some of the band’s 70s AOR smarts and something that sounded more like a single, but the pomp and prog is here to full effect, meandering and then charged in songs like the excellent Throwing Mountains and the erratic Animals On The Roof. ■■■■■■■■■■