IZZ - Collapse The Wave (2024)

It’s been five years since fellow New York-based progressive rock group IZZ unleashed their ninth studio album Don’t Panic, a year before 2020, when the world came to a screeching halt. They had been busy. Laura Meade had unleashed two solo albums; 2020’s Remedium, and 2021’s conceptual story, The Most Dangerous Woman in America, based probably on the tragic story of American actress Jean Seberg (Breathless).

And doing her own show which she did at the Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, Long Island, paying tribute to the Great American Songbook this year on March 2nd. She’s more than just a prog princess, she’s her own true self when it comes to her music. But let’s get back to IZZ. This year, the band have unleashed their tenth, yes, their tenth studio album Collapse the Wave.

This marks a revolution for IZZ’s incredible journey as they take their latest album into the stars. The complex harmonies, themes of the death of someone else’s ego, relinquishing of self, and possible parallel universes to right the wrongs they’ve done years ago. For Tom Galgano, who has kept the train chugging for nearly 27 years, has not backed down without a fight.

Tom’s brother John, brings out the heavy ammunition with machine gun fire as he bursts through his bass line in the ‘Brace for Impact’ midsection before Tom lets out the synths and Hammond organ with its crimson-like approach that speaks of In the Wake of Poseidon and carrying the torch that Keith Emerson has left for him.

Laura’s soft-soothing vocals on ‘Deep Inside’ pulls in some touches between Nick Drake’s first three studio albums, medieval arrangements, and Bowie’s Hunky Dory. The acoustic guitars add in the struggle of trying to move forward, but the haunting images can hit you, in a nanosecond whilst the pain and suffering will make you have a nervous breakdown, out of the blue.

Returning back to its folky roots, Laura returns to the mystic forest once more with its howling winds, calling for the spirits to return back to their resting place throughout the echoing atmospheres of ‘Sometimes Sublime’. It sounds like unearthly sessions that Galgano had discovered of the Trespass-era that Genesis left off the cutting room floor and used it to re-visit their golden years as an underground band.

The title-track brings to mind the Gershwin approach to ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ with its symphonic fanfare synthesizers, reflecting the day in the life of every New Yorker, going through waking up early in the morning, going to work 9 to 5, and heading out in the evening for a big sigh of relief to relieve the stress by pumping out the spark to give those electric guitars, a shine of starting a brand-new day to get through the weekend.

The Brubeck approach of a mini-opera throughout the struggles to being happy on ‘Not About Me’ speaks volume. There’s the intensity between the vocals, the ‘Bolero’ piano exercise, waltz-like textures, they’re at their breaking point. Laura, is the diplomat, trying to calm the situation, spreading her wings and fly across the New York landscape and singing to the citizens of the big apple with her fellow comrades to bring calm and wonder into everyone’s point of view.

When I think of ‘Soak Up the Sunlight’ I see IZZ combining the forces between Neal Morse’s lyrical textures from his Transatlantic years, and the Belew-era of ‘80s King Crimson during the Discipline session with its jazz fusion approach. IZZ know their source material very well, reflecting the hot, hot sun coming across the beaches from Corpus Christi to South Padre Island, Texas.

Another challenge, accepted. The complexity is there, the structures are also there, it may be a good sign to see IZZ bringing in something quite extraordinary with their latest album. And they’re in top form.