Dreams of Fireflies (on a Christmas Night)

As an Englishman, it always astounds me to think that TSO are a huge commodity in the United States, as to me, they have always just been an offshoot of Savatage, my favourite band, and one most people around here have never heard of either. Nevertheless, TSO remain a giant draw during the holiday season, and while Paul O’Neill’s hokey Yuletide tales only hit home during a certain time of year, it still sounds like Savatage to me, so I’ll always find something about it to like. Considering how long some of those Christmas Trilogy albums are, it’s nice to get a little stopgap EP like this, as fifteen minutes of wistful melodic poetry is a lot easier to take than the mountain of cheese that ‘The Christmas Attic’ was. We all know the best TSO album was ‘Beethoven’s Last Night’, anyway, and it was the only one that truly sounded like a lost Savatage album, so when I reach for O’Neill’s stuff, it’s usually that, but as I write this, it’s Christmas Eve on a rather chilly day in the north of England, and ‘Dreams Of Fireflies’ is really hitting the spot right now.

All that aside, this was basically a short collection of works sandwiched between the bloated non-Christmas album ‘Night Castle’ and the mostly Jon Oliva-helmed ‘Letters From The Labyrinth’, most likely the last Trans-Siberian Orchestra album ever (unless Paul has left books of poetry in his study that one day, God willing, Jon will write music for), so what you get here is a nice summation of what TSO are all about. The cover art is absolutely gorgeous, and really sets the moody for these wintry artifacts, and though the first two pieces are metal instrumentals, Paul wrote poetry for them in the booklet, so it’s kinda like a mini TSO treat. ‘Winter Palace’ kicks things off with a lot of pep, opening with Jon Oliva’s nimble piano before kicking into a storm of riffs and lavish keys that sound an awful lot like something from Savatage’s ‘Dead Winter Dead’. ‘Dreams Of Fireflies’ itself is a neo-classical mishmash of ideas from Mozart and Vivaldi that finds Al Pitrelli and Jon fighting over epic symphonic phrases. Both of these tunes are more metal than anything found on ‘Night Castle’ and remind you of why TSO was such a good idea in the first place. ‘I Had A Memory’ is the first vocal driven song, with a nice vocal turn from Erika Jerry. It harbors one of those iconic O’Neill vocal lines I can’t get enough of and resembles the jaunty ‘Vienna’ from ‘Beethoven’s Last Night’. Great tune. ‘Someday’ is a rather throwaway acoustic tune about war, not that exciting, but closer ‘Time You Should Be Sleeping’, the lone Oliva composition here, is a lovely song that is up there with the best stuff this collective ever did.

So there you go. If the evocative artwork doesn’t draw you in, the short time it takes to consume it might. TSO are certainly not for those who think Savatage should’ve called it a day after ‘Gutter Ballet’, but it’s a lovely little piece for this time of year, and the first two metal instrumentals are Savatage, I don’t care what you say. Scanty, but worthwhile.