"As I do not own the first album, I can't comparize the two albums, but this one here surely is very good. I wouldn't have thought that Aviv Geffen is such a good songwriter, my favourite of this album is a composition by him, 'End of the World'. Other Highlights include Christenings, Some Day, Once, Miss U... really a wonderful Artpop album."
"This is a nice "easy listening" pop/rock album with symphonic qualities. For some reason I can't get past Geffen's peculiar accent ... but musically it's quite good. There aren't any true highlights though, compared to the "real" Porcupine Tree albums - Steven Wilson is really just a guest star here."
"They say you can recognize a good combination when they see it. It has been said about Simon & Garfunkel, McCartney & Lennon, Waters & Gilmour and many more. Some have said that even a totally coincidental mix between Aviv Geffen & Steven Wilson, is one of the following. After the first, successful album, and the tour - which was even more successful, after Blackfield have - almost literally - conquered Europe, the time has come to hear another Blackfield album.
Although the suprising fact that the album is called "Blackfield II" (Who would have thought! :-)), the album is full of exciting song, that keeps the short legacy of the band - songs that deal with the inner parts of the human soul, the deepest depression and the enormous need for love. The structure of "Blackfield II" is very like the first: 10 tracks, the same one track sung by Geffen - when most of the album is sung by SW, and the same two tracks that are taken - suprisingly - from Aviv Geffen's repertuar.
It is kind of a weird thing that Blackfield decided to take "1,000 People", which is in my opinion a very personal track that Geffen wrote about himself ("1,000 people yelled and shouted my name, but i wanna die in this moment, i wanna die" translated directly from hebrew) - but maybe that's what makes the album so interesting: the fact that songs are uprooted from it's base, translated and got a new meaning. I could only mention "End Of The World", originally written in 1997 for Geffen's compliation, "Full Moon", which dealt with the situation back then in Israel, and in the new version is more of a mourning song for a friend who died, and is now in heaven.
In conclusion, "Blackfield II" is new exciting chapter of Blackfield's career, a chapter which symbols the fact that they are not changing, keeping the same consistent way that lead them to the contract with Warner/Atlantic , and maybe will reach another heights soon."
"As a big fan of Porcupine Tree's music, this album - maybe because one half of the project is SW - is some kind of a continuity to the musical genre that PT invented, Although the songs are less complicated than PT's songs, contains only 3-4 minutes of music.
Mainly, the album is dealing with inner-heart problems; broken relationships, broken dreams and even has its way of expressing social protest ("Cloudy Now"). an interesting fact about the songs that the album contains is that three of them are actually translations of Aviv Geffen's songs, that he released in israel ("Glow", "Cloudy Now" & "Scars"). "Scars" was also performed with AG's band, "The Mistakes".
My favorite tracks in the album are "Glow" & the first single that came out of the album, "Hello". the last is maybe only 03:03, but it still has a lot more than it's time.
In my opinion, there is no wonder that "Blackfield" has so much success all around europe, beacuse it speaks to a global audience. so, i will give it 4 stars (il'l keep 5 stars for the next albums... :)."
