Musical Evolution
This album marked the transition from the purely piano-driven songs that established Hopes and Fears to more progressive, sophisticated music, again without using guitars. All songs on the album and b-sides from the singles use these sounds. As seen on Strangers, Rice-Oxley creates these sounds using the distortion pedals and keyboards connected to the CP70 piano. The sound can be recreated by distorting the piano sound and combining with distorted Gothic chorus effect on a digital piano.
Perhaps one of the most notable changes on Under the Iron Sea is the effect pedal-created effects on several songs on the album, most notably "Is It Any Wonder?" and "Crystal Ball". The b-sides for single releases such as "Nothing in My Way" and "Is It Any Wonder?" are influenced primarily by electronic music, suggesting that the band keep experimenting with their music and testing new instruments.
Read more about this topic: Under The Iron Sea
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or evolution:
“If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there are night owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Like Freud, Jung believes that the human mind contains archaic remnants, residues of the long history and evolution of mankind. In the unconscious, primordial “universally human images” lie dormant. Those primordial images are the most ancient, universal and “deep” thoughts of mankind. Since they embody feelings as much as thought, they are properly “thought feelings.” Where Freud postulates a mass psyche, Jung postulates a collective psyche.”
—Patrick Mullahy (b. 1912)