My Heart Has a Wish That You Would Not Go doesn't quite abandon the directions taken on 2004's
Seclusion EP or the previous year's full-length, psych-metallic
Sleep and Release -- the overall extravagance remains, and
Aereogramme still reaches for the sky -- but it does signal a turn toward a more thoughtful, artistically ambitious sound than before, not just maintaining the Scottish neo-prog quartet's penchant for forward movement but catapulting them out of minor-league status. Only half-a-dozen years earlier, on their 2001 debut
A Story in White,
Aereogramme was weighted down with elephantine guitars, bloated, plodding rhythms and an overcrowded production. Since then they've progressively relaxed a bit more each time out, thinking on a grander scale texturally but reserving their desire for grandiosity in favor of increasingly complex song structures, more expansive instrumentation and judicious use of the space and time at their disposal.
My Heart Has a Wish is awash in opulent strings, dramatic keyboards and multi-layered vocals, at times so thick as to tread on symphonic
Moody Blues/
Pink Floyd territory and at others airy and earnestly ambling in a
Coldplay/
Radiohead sort of way. Vocalist
Craig B. is less self-conscious than on past efforts, transformed into a truly engaging frontman in total command on showpiece tracks such as "Nightmares" and "Barriers," and dynamic and radiant on the more delicately constructed "Exits" and "Finding a Light."