By Deuce
30 years ago, The Far Cry might’ve had to worry about the legal rights to their name because of the efforts of The Pharcyde—whose band members likely chose this spelling to stay away from the lawyers of Gary Larson’s popular The Far Side comic strip. Today, with no legal wrangling in the way, the foursome in The Far Cry (The Pharcyde started out as a quartet too) strive to cover almost every aspect of the game in Once There Was.
If you couldn’t tell by the title, this oeuvre is a classic conceptual album, a long player that has—and does—it all. When’s the last time you heard a 14-minute track that wasn’t jazz? That’s on here. Other tunes don’t even hit the minute marker, such as “The Carnival of Doom”, which is 49 seconds of pure bedlam. Another tune gets the better part of 13 minutes. Another does the same for about seven minutes, while none of the others on this 15-track collection bust the three and a half minute mark.
Moreover, these dudes are dealing with some heavy themes—from start to finish, as it were. The endless, rolling, roiling water of the Book of Genesis provide the motif for “Unholy Waters”, the leadoff. From there, the gentlemen get to “Crossing Pangea”, which is a predominantly instrumental number with some remarkable electric guitar playing.
The thing about “Pangea” and “Waters” is that, given the amount of time they take up, they encompass multiple moods, tempos, some serious keyboard playing, different riffs, and the like. After “The Following”, when the LP is characterized by songs of much shorter duration, each of those grooves, moods, etc. is pinned to just one song that, for the most part, flows right into the next. Thus, instead of packing, say, eight songs in one, which might be the case on “Water”, there’s eight individual songs that pickup where the previous ones ended.
For example, “Dimensions of Darkness” lasts less than three minute before yielding to “Gathering of Shadows”. The former’s got the spooky sounding keyboards on it, panned and staccato in moments, but coupled with long, ominous sounding synths. “Shadows” catches on to these effects nicely, albeit in a more structured, orderly fashion.
It all makes for quite the listening experience and, in the esteem of this reviewer, a unique one.