PULL - THE MYSTERIOUS FOURTH ALBUM BY MR. MISTER

After the album GO ON and the disappointment of its commercial failure, MR. MISTER could have been forgiven for giving it way and disbanding there and then. Guitarist STEVE FARRIS did quit the band in 1989, but the other three members, singer/bass guitarist RICHARD PAGE, drummer PAT MASTELOTTO and keyboardist STEVE GEORGE decided to keep MR. MISTER alive, and with the help of four session guitarists filling in for the absent Farris, the band recorded the ultra obscure album PULL between 1989 and 1990, which was shelved by the band's record company because it was deemed to be too experimental and too much of a departure away from mainstream pop rock. It was only in 2010, twenty years later, when PULL was finally released on Richard Page's own label LITTLE DUME RECORDINGS. The album GO ON was a marginal progressive rock experiment for MR. MISTER, but with PULL, the band delved a lot further into experimental territory, the result being an album which is both challenging and very radio unfriendly, with the exception of a few songs out of the eleven. LIFETIME is the most radio friendly one of them all, it sounds quite similiar to the more upbeat songs on GO ON. The 'mostly' instrumental closing track AWAYA dynamically is brilliant progressive rock very reminiscent of latter day PINK FLOYD and GENESIS. The opening track LEARNING TO CRAWL is all about Steve George and his keyboards, the song's intro sounds so much like TONY BANKS from Genesis. WE BELONG TO ONE, another more 'mainstream' sounding track, was used as a download song on the LITTLE DUME website just prior to the belated released of the album, and WAITING IN MY DREAMS was tacked on to Mr. Mister's Greatest Hits. PULL is very experimental, i can hear a lot of Genesis influence, some Pink Floyd influence, even early TOTO. A few of the songs on PULL have very similiar experimental dynamics to songs on the 1981 TOTO album TURN BACK.