Album Review: Stagehands - The Silent City

'The Silent City' is basically High School Musical on crack. I should start out by explaining that this album is about as concept as a concept album can get. It basically starts out with a young songwriter heading to a land of Entertainment and Fortune; Laconia. (Bear with me here) Only when he gets there he finds out that the Mayor of Laconia is a repressive individual that forces anyone seeking fame to conceal their identity by wearing a mask.

Stagehands is not a band, it’s more of a cast, with each character being played by a separate voice, and in all honesty it’s not that bad. The music throughout is consistent, powerful and catchy, using a variety of instruments ranging from the sea shantyesque ‘Sailor man, Sailor man’ with good use of harmonicas to the effective use of keys and synths in the ABBA influenced ‘Ashley/Searching/La Bibliotheque’ with a chorus that in all honesty is absolutely fantastic, it’s a shame that it’s followed by the complete bore that is ‘Island Fever’.