Style: progressive rock (clean vocals) Recommended for fans of: Neal Morse Band, Steven Wilson Country: Canada Release date: 17 January 2025
Vocals are a big hurdle as a prog listener. Listen, I love the bands, have Stockholm Syndromed myself into loving the voices, but will still intentionally and undoubtedly offend many of you: prog singers suck *. Geddy Lee? Jon Anderson? James LaBrie? Peter Gabriel? Salvatore Marrano? Steven Wilson? Your favorite prog singer? Not good. Any of them. That’s why I was pumped for The Passing, Jacob Roberge’s first solo album. Ol’ Jacob mildly blew up on YouTube a couple of years ago by posting a complete one-man cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and you can’t sing that if you don’t have pipes. Now releasing original material for the first time, can Roberge sing his way to the top of the modern prog game?
The Passing delicately unfurls with “The Long Way Home,” a simple minimalist piano line opening the track before vocals—soon after some acoustic strumming joins the fray. The piano lead at the start continues throughout the track and is a brilliant motif, grounding “The Long Way Home” even as it takes off into bigger orchestrated sections. At 3:45, the intensity builds into a brief crescendo with glissandoing strings leading us straight into a sugary guitar solo. The track is a beautiful opener, truly, with tasteful bass licks and exciting melodic progressions, setting the tone for the rest of the album. The Passing expertly straddles the two main types of prog rock like Steven Wilson does on The Raven Who Refused to Sing: it is both moody and atmospheric but also onanistic with some of its solos and its track lengths. Having an album in the Neal Morse style of prog rock but without the saccharine, Jesus-y bits is a godsend. The compositions are mature and rich, the arrangements often deceptively simple.
As far as the performances go, Jacob Roberge strangely emphasizes each instrument section-by-section with each track built out of solos. Sometimes the bass leads us; but then it settles into the background and his voice soars above it all; all of a sudden we have a sweet David Gilmour or Guthrie Govan-esque guitar lead (like in “Empty Traces, Pt. 1”). At other times, Roberge leans more into progressive rock excess with shreddy solos (18:00 into “The Passing”) and even a trumpet solo in “Petrichor” (a highlight of the album). However, along with the maturely restrained arrangements, Roberge keeps his voice very much contained to a small range, and it’s frustrating because the guy CAN belt (see his Queen cover or 3:40 into “Empty Traces, Pt. 2”). For once a progressive rock album has a singer with a gorgeous timbre, and yet the man doesn’t capital-s Sing.
Despite the over-reliance on “solos” in the production, Roberge actually avoids a lot of straight prog rock tropes in the performance. The synths are retro, yes, and some riffs like at 4:00 into “Garden of Souls” could generically fit onto any prog rock album of the last fifty years; but I almost wish this were more of a love-letter to classic prog rock at times (à la The Raven) because Roberge performs those Prog moments so well as on the latter half of “Garden of Souls.” Where he really wears his influences—namely, Neal Morse—on his sleeve, though, is the closing titular epic “The Passing.” Clocking in at a crazy ambitious thirty-two minutes, it sadly doesn’t earn them all because it reaches a clear climax and natural resolution at twenty-two minutes in before unnecessarily restarting after a minute or so of noodly ambience. In the superior first half, we’re treated to a fun, although stereotypical, overture of sorts, some standout solos like the one full of Southern Empire’s flair at 8:08, and a lovely climax to the false ending. “The Passing” is a bumpy ride full of highs and lows, too indulgent for a debut. Just because Roberge managed to create an enticing mix of atmospheric and masturbatory progressive rock doesn’t mean he has the requisite compositional skills to pull off a track that’s nearly as long as an LP.
On The Passing, Jacob Roberge clearly has the skills to pay the bills and make it big in prog, even coming up with his own distinct compositional voice despite such obvious influences, but freeing himself up a little would be beneficial. He has a great voice but doesn’t use it; the epic is too far removed from his more minimalist-maximalist approach to The Passing’s shorter tracks; and the production, while crisp, doesn’t allow for compositions as dynamic as Roberge could compose. As a young artist with so much obvious talent instrumentally and vocally, though, I would bet that Roberge becomes one of the symphonic prog giants on a sophomore effort, passing some of his forebears.
Jacob Roberge is: – Jacob Roberge (everything (I assume))
* In the traditional sense. Of course I still think they’re good singers and like them all. This is a reactionary intro designed to get you to hate read the rest of the review, and I bet it worked. Played like a fiddle. *
