THE CURATOR

Twenty-Six/12 CROMERZONE

Grandiose musings as Norfolk goes prog folk.

This is more restrained and reflective than Alistair Murphy’s cult “Norfolk prog” album Where The Stars Will Give Way To The Morning, perhaps because he’s forsaken guitars for a baby grand piano, which is the star of this show. Known as The Curator because he is one, at Cromer Museum, Murphy’s fiercely meditative ballads call to mind Peter Hammill, most notably on 26-minute finale The Light Of Setting Suns, which he says he began drafting versions of as far back as 1977. The string arrangements, helmed by No-Man graduate Steve Bingham, who guests throughout, drape the edifice in neo-classical stylings as

The Curator half-sings, half-speaks an adaptation of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey. It’s impressive, if more than a little stifling. The album’s first half balances it with shorter, relatively more pop (albeit downbeat) numbers, which fall somewhere between blues and avant-rock, although the lashings of sax and Bingham’s violin occasionally suggest something closer to Sade. Diana Hare guests and duets on vocals, and there’s an earnest cover of late Texan Christian-rocker Larry Norman’s I Hope I’ll See You In Heaven. Much intensity here, if somewhat solemn and suffocating.