It's always a good sign when you listen to a twenty minute song or forty minute record and wonder how it ended so quickly. Melbourne guitarist and singer Ben Cameron presents two long songs on his debut album as The Ben Cameron Project, singing and playing guitar, bass and keys while brother Chris provides drums and percussion. It's a grand and flowing tribute to the staples of this kind of Prog - Yes, Transatlantic, Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree - and explores living with mental illness as its concept.
Taking a short theme built on a couple of arpeggios, Cameron announces his Prog intentions from the very first notes of the introduction as guitar and organ play off against each other while drums and bass build a groove. After a couple of minutes of jostling we drop to a smooth passage that introduces vocals and from here we travel through a range of moods and emotions (with the exception of joy and happiness) as we drift down the river, encountering rapids, waterfalls and clear slow-flowing ponds as we go. Whether guitar is wailing, riffing, chugging or being tenderly plucked, it really dominates proceedings as the other instruments serve mainly to provide depth to the sound.
You simply can't explore something this complex with traditional rock song structure and short songs. With Tipping Point we get to feel and share the despair of waiting for someone or something to come and take the pain away, or the anger at everyone for not understanding and not standing by when times get really bad. By personifying his anxiety and depression, Cameron builds one side of a dialogue which somehow makes understanding his thoughts easier, and at the same time suggesting there's an element of a love-hate relationship. In "Part 1" he sings about reaching the tipping point and it's uncertain just what is on the other side:
Deep inside a secret hides
That's cutting ties and taking lives
Need to find a deeper mind
A better life that satisfies
All there is, is fight or fight
There is no other option in this life
When you reach the tipping point
There's only one way you can free your mind
In "Part 2" he has crossed the line but it leaves him empty. It's not explicit what happened at the tipping point - suicide, medication, some other treatment - but it's clear it's left a hole:
But now I've reached the other side
I've found I have nothing more
At one time I flew oh so high
And found now I have nothing
Nothing to take away
The length of the album is good - any longer and it would start to drag, and the pace of change sees the listener cover a lot of ground, some familiar and some less so, but with a great sense of restraint. Changes in tempo don't just happen for the sake of it and there are some tidy bursts of off-tempo work (one device there could probably be a little more of). Cameron's voice loses some strength and wavers a little on some lower notes but for the most part it's strong and clear.
I've really enjoyed listening to this album, and if you're like most people I know and partial to a bit of Pink Floyd, then you're sure to find something to like in Tipping Point.
