December 12, 2000 - Tangents

A week after my last release and a year and a half since "Triptych", The Tea Party released a greatest hits album called "Tangents" on December 12, 2000. I don't care for greatest hits albums, but there are some unreleased songs on here as well: one brand new single, two B-sides from their last album and one cover! Let's check out a few new songs by The Tea Party!

The first song is brand new and was also a pretty succesful single and it's called "Walking Wounded". It's got a bit of an Eastern feel to it as Tea Party likes to do and it's a pretty simple and quiet main riff with Jeff Martin leading the way with his great voice. The chorus is a little louder with some interesting stuff going on in the background and Martin continues to lead the way with some more great vocals. Stuart Chatwood plays some quietly epic keyboards and Jeff Burrows shows off with a couple nice fills. Martin plays a solid "solo" (it's really just the main riff with more gusto) towards the end of the song and they did a great job if making this single sound quietly epic, nicely done! Up next is the first of two B-sides off of "Triptych", "Waiting On A Sign", and Chatwood carries the verse with some cool soft piano and some nice soft bass as well. Martin sings the first verse and chorus with just the two of them and he sounds pretty good (as usual). The drums come in starting second verse and Martin comes in and out with some distorted light guitar to complete this light but interesting main riff. It leads right into a similar chorus and aside from a short new part after the next round, they stick to this main riff for the whole song, and I can see why this was left off the album; it's decent but nothing too amazing. The other B-side is called "Lifeline" and Martin plays some cool sitar-like guitar, Burrows plays some cool drums that fit the mood nicely, and then they move nicely into a pretty cool main riff with some more standard guitar along with the sitar and things sound pretty good! The chorus is in a similar vein, but I'm surprised this one was left off the album, I think it's very classic Tea Party and I liked it the whole way through. The final song on this album is "Paint It Black", a cover of the famous Rolling Stones song. The guitar and bass are solid, but it's piano that plays the lead riff and it sounds pretty good I'd say! Martin sounds good singing Mick Jagger's vocals and the crazy distorted guitar in the chorus sounds pretty sweet! This is definitely an interesting take on this song and I dare say it might be better than the original(that's just me though). Chatwood's piano sounds great and Martin's vocals at the end are especially good. A pretty cool cover!

That is the end of the new songs on "Tangents" and I thought there was definitely some good stuff here! I look forward to their next full album!

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