Return of the Lydia is The Tirith’s third album and one I took a flyer on after hearing the superb title track. The band go all the way back to the early 1970s when named as Minas Tirith after the city featuring in Lord of the Rings.
They weren’t around for long back then splitting without recorded output. Then the universe got them back together around 2010 with Minas dropped from the moniker to leave them as The Tirith.
Here on Return of the Lydia we have an excellent chunk of very well composed and performed neo-classical prog with a fair bit of classic rock, melodies and atmospheric stuff in there throughout. I’m enjoying it very much.
The twelve minute epic which is the title track starts things off. A spectacular song continuing something of a running theme from their earlier two albums based on a sci-fi related tale somewhere between 2001 A Space Odyssey and Lost in Space(ish).
Split in to three parts beginning with a chilled out, laid back ethereal opening before the big explosion of huge riffing and a wonderful guitar solo rocks things up asking What do you say to an alien?
According to the tongue-in-cheek lyrics you say “Hello, my name is Mike and I’ve come to take your world”. But they don’t and tootle off the Betelgeuse instead. The third part of the song reverts back to the atmospheric style of part 1 with lyrics suggestion the story isn’t over.
Have a listen to it.
The rest of the album comprises mainly of longish songs bar the shorter, heavier Go the Drifter which reminds me of something Rush might have done on say Clockwork Angels.
Crystalwell in particular is right up there in scope with the title track. Here the lyrics are based around a poem by Robert Southey called The Well of St. Keyne – with St. Keyne being a village in Cornwall with a well and it is said that if a married couple drink from the well, the one who drinks first, as the saying goes, wears the trousers.
The composition and flow of the song build in a folky/mystical slant as it meanders along very nicely with the momentum ebbing and flowing with a nice catch melodic chorus and another very fine evocative guitar solo full of tone and feel.
The Uncertainty Principle adds some more variation in to proceedings going somewhere around a prog-tinged melodic rock piece before another nice long piece to close it out with The Meeting of the Ways.
Full of changes between the acoustic start building a brooding in to full on prog rock bombast of the med-track instrumental piece then the big finish.
Overall an excellent and varied album mixing the proggy stuff with the heavier stuff without taking itself too seriously.
Indeed – so impressed am I with Return of the Lydia I went straight back to order The Tirith’s first two albums – Tales from the Tower and A Leap Into the Dark. They are both top notch also.
All three albums available their Bandcamp page at a reasonable price. Download/streaming options there if you prefer that to a good old CD.
Here’s the link:
https://thetirith.bandcamp.com