Strong recommendation: Three Fact Fader (album), by ENGINEERS

Year: 2009
Country: United Kingdom
Spotify link (Entire album)
YouTube link  (Clean Coloured Wire)
YouTube link (Helped By Science)
YouTube link (Emergency Room)

One of the absolute best albums of the 00's has very little, if nothing to do with prog. The outstanding British group Engineers is a pop/rock group that belongs to the shoegazing subgenre of pop made famous by outfits such as the better known French duo Air. While their type of pop music may not be particularly challenging to a listener, Engineers are an exceptional group nonetheless. Their capability of creating beautiful, memorable melodies without descending into meaninglessness is truly exemplary.

Three Fact Fader, released three years ago, was their second full length album and so far remains their crowning achievement. Even though some less powerful tracks are included, there are enough masterworks to achieve a classic status overall. The album opens with the modern classic Clean Coloured Wire which is actually based on a sample of Watussi, by the German group Harmonia, a track from their 1974 album Musik von Harmonia.

As great a song as Clean Coloured Wire is, I personally think it still pales in comparison with Helped By Science, possibly the greatest pop song of the decade. It is the one track where the Engineers' talent for building melodies shines brighter than anywhere else. Emergency Room builds a highly effective wall of sound on top of yet another attractive melody. Other standouts on the album include the title track Three Fact Fader as well as Crawl from the Wreckage, neither of which I was able to find in YouTube, so therefore no links are available above.

Engineers made their recording debut with an EP called Folly in September 2004. That recording already showed significant promise, opening with one of their all time greatest songs A Given Right. A single release Forgiveness followed in February 2005, containing an even greater work called Stake to Glory, one of the most beautiful pop songs of that year - maybe even the whole decade.

After these smaller releases, the self-titled, full length debut album Engineers was finally released in March 2005. This extremely impressive beginning of a recording career was then interrupted for well over four years, until Three Fact Fader came out in July 2009. As impressive as the debut album had been, its follow-up was even better. It seemed that Engineers could do nothing wrong.

Well, it turned out that they could. Their third album was rushed into an eagerly waiting market at the end of September 2010. In Praise of More was, in every way, as much of a disappointment as the earlier recordings had been pleasant surprises. Suffice to say, it wasn't a terrible album, but not a particularly good one either. At the time we are waiting to see how Engineers are going to recuperate from this disappointment.

Commercially, Engineers never did particularly well with Three Fact Fader, let alone its successor. Their debut peaked at #84 on the U.K. chart and generated some attention towards them, but neither one of the following two albums was able to reach a chart position.