This demo strikes me as a happy, playful kind of crazy space dream with all the prog rock associations in place, and for a home-mixed-recorded demo it’s surprisingly good both in terms of technical mastery and creative inspiration. While I’m no big fan of this type of music - i.e. upbeat, slightly futuristic prog rock - I can certainly see that Pet Umbrella’s work has potential beyond most of the thousands of other demo discs mailed out to overworked reviewers each year.

That being said, and while I like the melodic lines and the catchy harmonies because of their playfully crazy build-up, I find that the vocals just don’t do it for me - this has always been a problem in prog rock, I think, because it takes a lot to make voices fit in with the sound landscape of the genre without making them sound too distinguished from the rest of the band, disrupting the overall pace of the music and so on. Still, this is quite good stuff looking aside from this point, and I don’t want to tear down a band which have obvious technical mastery of their instruments - probably not something I would go out and spend money on, but if prog rock is your thing then Pet Umbrella is as good a bet as any.

Year Released: 2002
Label: Self-Produced
Related Link: Pet Umbrella Official Site
Date Reviewed: 2004-08-10
Author: Andreas