"Insurgentes" is one of those difficult albums, their potential and hidden qualities only gradually reveal that grow with each one by listening more and more to my heart. The pace of most numbers is temperate, the mood almost throughout oppressive, only occasionally interrupted by timidly hopeful tones. Musically pulls Wilson out all the stops, not a piece sounds like the other, and quite often, the songs develop in surprising directions: "No twilight within in the courts of the sun" suggests, after a improvised jazzy sounding beginning (to my ears the acoustic equivalent of, sorry, indigestion), some - in the best sense - more conventional tones and makes me so promptly re-conciliatory. In almost romantic-sounding "Significant Other" guest vocalist Clodagh Simonds excited duet with Wilson. In "Abandoner" a tender melody is suddenly mutilated by brutal White Noise-Geschramme, a dramaturgical element skillfully Wilson - used elsewhere - in a similar form. Other tracks, like the gloomy guitar number "only child" or the quiet, heartbreaking beautiful piano piece "Insurgentes" do not require an inordinate amount of bells and whistles and lined up but wonderfully into the overall picture.
If the mood only one or two times be somewhat loosened by faster, rockier numbers in the style of the opener, a maximum score of my hand, the album would be safe. As versatile and great, so beautiful, "Insurgentes" may sometimes seem, as much as it remains a difficult pleasure.
