Warthur Whilst Pendragon's Passion was - true to the title - an emotive and cathartic album, to the point where on repeated listens its grumpiness (and latching-on to tired political talking points) turned me off.

By comparison, Men Who Climb Mountain finds the band in a somewhat more contemplative mode. It seems to have been constructed as a showcase for Nick Barrett's guitar playing in particular; those who have listened carefully to Pendragon over the years already know that Nick is capable of evoking great emotion with his playing, on a par with peers like Marillion's Steve Rothery and inspirations like Camel's Andy Latimer, and he's very much the featured player here.

Some editions of the album include a bonus disc of a solo appearance by Nick, playing an acoustic set at a friend's pub as a favour. We've had acoustic releases from Pendragon before - the Acoustically Challenged album, for instance - and it's usually had a rather transformative effect on their music, steeped as it usually is in Clive Nolan's lush keyboards and electric guitar performances from Nick.

Here, however, whilst there's no Men Who Climb Mountains material in the acoustic set itself, you don't really miss it - because translating it to an acoustic format would not necessarily change that much, since an acoustic-sounding guitar style is so prominent on so much of the album anyway. It's an interesting shift towards a gentler style after two albums of harder-rocking, darker material, and proof that the journey of constant development, reinvention, and progress that the band have been on since they said farewell to their well-honed 1990s style on Not Of This World continues. At the same time, the almost singer-songwriter qualities of the album does lead to issues - Nick's vocal style has never been what I'd call versatile, and he seems to try out a few too many experiments here where his voice is trying to carry the song and it just doesn't quite manage it.

Losimba To make it short, Men Who Climb Mountains is exactly the album one expects from Pendragon. The title is an added bonus for me, as I like to climb mountains myself, although there is no song literally about my hobby on the album. But I read this in Nick's ramblings last summer, so no disappointment here.

The first two songs, Belle Amie and Beautiful Soul, the titles identical in meaning but in French and English respectively, are fine appetizers of what's to come. On other albums this slow intro followed by a fine rocker have been merged to longer openers, but they definitely work as separate tracks. Come Home Jack then reminds me a wee bit of Voyager from The World which is neither very original nor bad. The only little weakness of the album is nondescript In Bardo, but this is more than cancelled out by the following wonderful ballad Faces Of Light. If a title with "light" is immediately followed by the same title just with "darkness" one would expect a stark contrast, and the next track doesn't disappoint with its driving beat. The last three tracks are quite typical Pendragon songs, each with one instrument providing the extra bit. While the end section of For When The Zombies Come is far slower and bluesier than its counterpart in my favourite Pendragon song, Am I Really Losing You?, I can imagine to love it equally after I'll have heard it several times more. While I couldn't hear out an extraordinary solo section in Explorers Of The Infinite which IS something that can be associated with mountain climbing, it has one of the best bass lines I've heard in the last 5 years. Finally, Netherworld is defined by the good keyboard work, especially the section where the keys sound like a blues guitar.

Had Pendragon never published The World and The Window Of Life, this album would have straight 5 stars. But they have, so the bonus for originality cannot be applied, but my rating remains between 4 and 4.5 stars with a tendency to the higher rating.