It All Comes Down To Mood

It starts well. ‘Hat and Coat’ sets the tone for the album. Leonard sings the lyrics to a solid groove, more in the style of Roger Waters or Mark Knopfler (although not as baritone). The music has a strong The Wall-era Pink Floyd aesthetic, although the lyrics are primarily wry observations rather than public acts of hand-wringing. 

My favourite track on the album is ‘Bishops of Fright’, but there are a lot of bangers on here. ‘Bishops of Fright’ is one of the longest tracks on the album; it features Ian Anderson on flute and is arguably the most traditional ‘prog’ tracks. The lyrics are also perhaps the most Floyd-esque paranoia too.

The 16 tracks are an album of maturity. Composition and lyric writing are mature throughout. This perhaps highlights a quirk of this album – it can sound like that problematic ‘I’ve still got it’ album rather than his first. And yet, for all that, it’s no vanity project. Yes, in outright prog-rock terms, those now-superannuated English public-school art-rockers need not lose sleep over It All Comes Down To Mood. But that’s partly because there are no 36-minute-long odes to Swinburne played on a Mellotron in 7/4 time by someone dressed as a grasshopper… thank goodness.

Of course, it helps that the finest musicians accompany him on every track. If you have bassist Tony Levin, guitarist Tim Pierce, and drummer Aaron Sterling in your address book, you’ll use them for your project. You can also call Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson and ask him to bring his flute. And, if you have Bob Ludwig under ‘M’ for ‘mastering’ and Chris Bellman under ‘L’ for ‘lacquer cutting’, they go in the mix too. And when it comes to vinyl, who better to ‘shepherd’ it than Michael Fremer?

In that respect, the vinyl pressing deserves praise. The team cut it across four sides, so those grooves have the space to track well, and you could play this repeatedly with no track damage. Yes, you can download this record and even play it on YouTube. But at its heart, this is an LP, a very well-cut, superbly mastered LP.

It’s also a fabulous recording. Every scintilla of information is on display, in its right place in the mix and the sense of cohesion and dynamics make this a must have demonstration record.

I’m frequently negative toward audiophile records because they are so often musically bankrupt, no matter how well-recorded they may be. But, when they are this good, who cares? This is the must-have audiophile record of 2025. Buy it.

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