The only album by Centaur, basically Matt Talbot's solo project, offers what one would pretty much expect. With the sound and song structure stripped down to a minimum, I realize how important a complement Tim Lash's strat was to Talbot's droning Les Paul. Without Lash's leads, intros build agonizingly slowly; on "The Same Place" the same 4(or 5) chords are cranked out for more than 2 minutes with little variation before the vocal makes an appearance. With vast expanses of time filled with little melodically but a couple droning chords, much of the album seems like filler. There is no earthly reason for songs like "Strangers On 5" to be almost 9 minutes. Except for a couple moments, like the acoustic textures on "Life Begins" and "Wait For The Sun" and the surprisingly fitting strings in the closing title song, there is nothing here we haven't heard before.
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