Babysteps

Henning Pauly's 3rd solo album Babysteps is very much a concept album based upon a true story that is about a person namely Nick in this case, who was a professional athlete who had a serious accident leaving him crippled and wheelchair bound, who is now struggling to come to terms with himself and what's entirely left of his life. Basically it deals with having faith in himself and his doctor, and his chances of any road to recovery, and perhaps having to start all over again in taking small steps at a time, or perhaps babysteps hence the title.Well the story seems interesting enough and Pauly wrote a double albums worth of material to cover it, and I have to say he's done a real brilliant job of it. That much that its certainly my favourite album of all the albums I have of him so far, including his 2nd solo album, his both albums with Frameshift and a one off album he done with Roswell Six to which I will be reviewing next.Once again Pauly as roped in quite a line up of vocalists to put over his story, all of which were on his previous albums and projects he has worked on and include James Labrie, Matt Cash and Michael Sadler. Jody Ashworth who only appeared as a backing singer on another of Pauly's project albums entitled Chain.Exe. Gets to sing the biggest majority of the tracks on this album and they all do a pretty solid job.Ian Crichton plays the guitar solo on track 9 and Marcus Gemainder contributes piano on tracks 4,7 & 10. Jim Gilmour plays piano and does the keyboard solo on track 6 and the rest is very much handled by Pauly himself including the mix and production.The more I discover about Pauly's work there is no doubt he is a really a great musician, writer and producer. I also see maybe a few influences from those who do exactly the same thing who I myself am well into and admire.For example he is perhaps trying to do what Arjen Lucassen in the same way does with his project Ayreon. That is simply to do what even Arjen copied himself from Jeff Wayne back in 1978 with War of The Worlds. By roping in other famous and more successful artists to sing on the music they all created.No doubt both Wayne and Lucassen are certainly more successful at roping in the big guys to work with them than what Pauly has ever been, but I admire what Pauly as done with this album, and it's certainly in my eyes a bloody great concept album done in the same style too, of progressive rock.The album Babysteps contains 15 tracks, 5 of which are all different variations and arrangements of the main theme entitled "Cafe" that kicks off the album and we get to hear throughout the course of the albums journey, right to the album ending off with it. It perhaps reminds me of how the band Arena done their 2nd album Pride to which was done a decade before what we have here, where they done the same thing with "Crying For Help" maybe he himself was influenced by their idea.Whatever influences Pauly had, I have to say they worked really well, and this is a very solid body of work, and an album that certainly rocks my boat, in the same way those other great artists I mentioned do as well.There are some superb tracks amongst the album Babysteps and the whole album works perfectly as an whole from start to finish with nothing remotely bad here on it. For a first time listener, listening to the album for the first time, it will perhaps take at least 2 or 3 spins before the album really starts to work its way in and you really start to appreciate just how good this album really is. So don't just play it once and say you do not like it. Take it from me the best albums on this planet, are those you have to grow into, and this certainly as those qualities about it if you give it the time of day.It's pretty hard to pick a favourite cause everything here is so damn good, but I am going to give it to track 9 "A Place In Time" cause I love the progression throughout. "What Do You Know?" that follows it is certainly another contender here along with track 12 the beautiful ballad of a song entitled "The Door".Overall Henning Pauly's 2006 album Babysteps is a terrific album. It's as I originally stated the best album I have heard from him so far without a doubt. The balance of various prog rock, metal, and ballad tracks throughout its entire journey work superbly together, and the material is very well written with nothing to cry about here.Gets all 5 Gold Stars from me, and if your into prog rock and concept albums, this will certainly rock your boat just as much as it did mine.