Album Review: Focus – Focus 12

There are bands and artists who end up being inextricably connected in listeners’ minds with a particular time period. This can be the case even if the artist’s work continued or continues long past that point in time. So it has long been the case with Focus, the Dutch progressive rock band led by Thijs van Leer.

The group got its start on Amsterdam in 1969, releasing its debut the following year, and continued through 1978. Not counting three very brief reunions over the next quarter century – none of which yielded new recordings – Focus was inactive/nonexistent until early 2002. At that point, the group’s time seemed to have come again, under van Leer’s leadership, the group has been active since then, releasing creatively expressive albums (albeit usually with unimaginative titles like Focus 8, Focus 9… you get the idea) right up to present day.

Focus hasn’t troubled the charts much since the mid 1970s, save for a 1985 release that charted in the band’s native Netherlands. And Focus’ far-and-away most well-known hit is the wacky, over-the-top prog of “Hocus Pocus.” You know: the song with the yodeling.

But all of that fails to recognize that van Leer and his band mates – including faithful drummer Perre van der Linden, who’s been with Focus nearly nonstop for its activities since 1971 – have made some consistently thrilling music. The current lineup of van leer, van der Linden and Menno Gootjes (guitar) and Udo Pannekeet (bass) has been together for some eight years – with Gootjes on board since 2010 – and that quartet has released two albums.

The latest of those is Focus 12 (remember what I wrote about creative album titles). It’s very much of a piece with what fans have come to expect and appreciate from the group. Wonderfully melodic compisitons played with spirit and technical expertise, delightful instrumentals featuring sublime arrangements that center – but not overly so – upon van Leer’s flute work.

The impressionistic quality of Focus’ music is just right to create mind movies in listeners’ heads. Ythe tunes on Focus 12 are of a generally tidy and compact sort, only one even breaks the five-minute mark. And the album as a whole is brief by CD era standards, clocking in at a shade over 40 minutes.

But if it’s quality not quantity that one seeks in his or her instro-prog, then Focus 12 is a fine enough destination. Van Leer composed most of the material, but his band mates all contributed as well; a live-in-the-studio improvisational piece, “Meta Indefinita” is credited to all four.

The tunes float by, not because they’re placid, inoffensive, lightweight or lacking in melody, but because they’re so seamlessly melodic. Gootjes and Pannekeet co-produced the sessions, and both demonstrate a sharp understanding of the sonic qualities that make Focus special. A classical sensibility informs the music, most notably when piano takes center stage as on “Bowie.” Bits of dissonance and odd meter crop up here and there, keeping tings edgy and fresh, but taken as a whole, Focus 12 swims at the most accessible end of the progressive rock pool. It’s a late-period success from a group who has delivered time again over the last half-century plus.

(And yup, that’s Roger Dean cover art, but you already knew that.)

You may also enjoy: my interview with Thijs van Leer from waaaay back in 2013.