The long-running Canadian progressive rock band (formed in 1977) were one of many groups that have used their time off the road to create new recordings. But for their made-in-lockdown album, Symmetry, Saga have chosen to do something special: new versions of classic songs from older albums, rearranged for acoustic instruments, played with guest musicians, and introducing new feels (even a touch of bluegrass?) into the band’s stately, majestic prog-rock epics.
“For the most part, it’s not just taking our old songs and playing unplugged versions of them,” Saga vocalist Michael Sadler told Goldmine. “We actually reimagined them as new arrangements. In some cases there are brand-new melody lines, because you have to make adjustments when breaking a song down, especially with all of the keyboards and the kind of guitar that (guitarist) Ian (Crichton) plays. If you break that down to a smaller, more intimate setting, a lot of things don’t translate.”
Reimaginging their songs for Symmetry necessitated, in some cases, rebuilding them from the ground up. Sadler recalled not just adjusting vocal keys, but also, in the case of “Wind Him Up,” changing the lyric to make it current. He even developed some new vocal melodies.
“It was a great challenge,” Sadler said. But the band didn’t want to let fans down by just putting out a rote regurgitation of old songs. “That’s not what this record is, and that’s what I hope people realize, because you have to hear it to actually get it, what we’re trying to do with it.”
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