RPWL, “The RPWL Experience”

RPWL, The RPWL Experience
Tempus Fugit/Inside Out (Arrives: Feb. 29, 2008)
By: Christa Titus

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“They are a German band
They’re trying to play the music of Pink Floyd
And so they make their way
Unable to come up with their own style”

The words above aren’t a critic slagging off Germany’s RPWL. They’re lyrics from the band’s self-deprecating rant “This Is Not a Prog Song,” the most lighthearted piece of music to be found on new album The RPWL Experience. We’re guessing the band has heard this criticism so much, it decided to tip a big wink (or jauntily wave a one-fingered salute) to naysayers with this pop tart song, giving it a wannabe rock star narrator who says, “If it was up to me they could kiss my ass goodbye/To be quite frank they make me fucking sick.”

RPWL does cut close to the Pink Floyd bone. Singer/keyboardist Yogi Lang’s voice could pass for David Gilmour’s, sans the slight rasp. (In fact, an English affectation flitters through Lang’s singing, while U.K. native Gilmour hardly has a trace in his vocals.) It also trades in the highly accessible psychedelia that Pink Floyd pioneered, the kind that invokes the vastness of the universe and the interconnectedness of man. But the band’s rock is more low-key than Floyd’s, even when it’s booming forth; its experimentation isn’t too far out to grasp and its tracks don’t get long-winded. RPWL stands on its own for its innate simplicity and doesn’t need heavy production to make its points, such as with a cut like “River,” which calmly trickles from an acoustic guitar alongside Lang’s voice before descending into murky waters that gurgle with discord.

Save for the comedic interlude of “This Is Not a Prog Song,” The RPWL Experience runs along seamlessly. Forget that song’s camp observation of, “This is definitely just the sort of music that can only be a mildly pleasant background noise while you’re doing something else.” It’s a carefully woven record that should be experienced as a whole, one soothing listen at a time. If you’re forced to choose a few tracks for the sake of introducing RPWL to someone, offer them “River,” “Silenced,” multilayered jam “Stranger” and lonesome centerpiece “Masters of War.” “Silenced,” a close cousin to Porcupine Tree, demonstrates the moderate pacing the band usually follows, and as the album’s first song, it immediately signals how conscientious the lyrics are. Corruption, consumerism, eternal love, existence itself—if these chaps ever toured with Rush, we could see them whiling away many nighttime hours on the bus engaged in deep conversation with drummer Neil Peart about the human condition. The perils of war and violence are especially referenced, and get their sad due on the mournful, fist-shaking “Masters of War,” a “War Pigs” for the new millennium.

So far, RPWL has announced only one U.S. concert performance for this year: May 3 at the Rites of Spring Festival in Glenside, Penn. The progressive music event has very limited tickets—about 1,300—so those attendees will be the chosen few in North America who will be lucky enough to hear RPWL perform in 2008. The rest of us will have to content ourselves with spinning The RPWL Experience until the band can mount a U.S. tour. Since it’s got a good sense of humor, maybe it should give Gilmour or Roger Waters a call.

myspace.com/rpwl