By the time of their third album changes were afoot for The Tangent. Roine Stolt and Zoltán Csörsz were gone, replaced by Krister Jonsson (with an assist by Dan Watts) on guitar and Jaime Salazar on drums. Andy Tillison becomes even more ambitious in his scope for the band, and A Place in the Queue clocks in at over two hours. But far from suffering from some of the slow bloat of their last album, here things become more varied, more expansive, and overall more successful. There are a lot of folks who call this the band’s best album, and while I might not quite agree there, we can certainly align that this is a huge, stellar record, fixing the mistakes of the previous and aiming for heights that will come to define the band on future releases.

When you think about it, The Tangent is kind of the perfect name for Tillison’s ongoing musical exploration. This early in the band’s career it could be construed as a tangent to the players’ other ongoing projects (Roine Stolt certainly took it that way, as this is his last hurrah with the band), but it’s also a good indicator of the musical direction: tangential to numerous styles and genres, beholden to none. Only a short year later that use case continues to hold true with their sophomore album The World That We Drive Through. Almost a half hour longer than the debut, it’s a more ambitious, expansive offering, relying less on compact passages and segues and building them into beefier song structures. It’s a less immediate but still gratifying album – with caveats – to my ears.