To celebrate their 20th anniversary, Canadian outfit Versa have combined the two parts of their ‘A Voyage/A Destination’ albums which were released in 2022 and 2024 respectively and combined them into one lengthy release (3 hours) with additional tracks/ performances. The first thing I noticed, even before putting it on the player, is that the cover of the new collection is virtually identical to that of Part Two, which seems very strange to me. This is the first time I have come across this band and albums, so I was intrigued to hear what they were like, especially as the press release says how highly they were regarded within the prog scene. I also noticed a huge number of guests, including Jim Grey and Sam Vallen of Caligula's Horse, Nick D'Virgilio (Big Big Train), Marjana Semkina (iamthemorning), Eric Gillette (Neal Morse Band, Temic), Ross Jennings (Haken), Lars Fredrik Frøislie (Wobbler), Kelly Nordstrom (eMolecule, Sound of Contact) and Michael Trew (Moon Letters) which can often bode well (Semkina in particular is hugely under-rated).
There is no doubt this is a very clever album with a large amount of instrumentation and orchestration, and multi-instrumentalist and composer Matthew Dolmage has obviously spent a great deal of time on the arrangements but I soon found that listening to this was more of a chore than a pleasure, and it just went downhill for me from there. The combination of post rock and progressive rock is intriguing, and individually the performances are excellent but there was little here for me to grab onto and when I started looking to see how much longer there was until it ended I knew my view was not going to be the same as those who have lauded these albums very highly indeed. Somewhat interestingly, they were entered onto ProgArchives in October 2024, but since then there have been zero reviews of their first three albums and only one for ‘Part Two’, so does that say something about how widely they are known or about the albums themselves? Discuss.
I have nothing against lengthy albums or songs, but with nothing here connecting with me either musically or lyrically all I can say is this is not for me. I am sure those who enjoyed the albums when they were originally released will gain a great deal from this expanded release, but I cannot imagine it is something to which I will ever return.
