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Any self-respecting progger loves to wrong-foot the listener.

But fans of Flower Kings guitarist Hasse Fröberg know to expect the unexpected, and they won’t be disappointed on the third album by his side project. Everything Can Change sees an upbeat piano pop ditty suddenly hijacked by Fröberg’s jazzy guitar squiddling, followed by equally skilful tinkling of the ivories by former Michael Schenker keysman Kjell Haraldsson. Elsewhere, at first Sabbath-style doom metal chimes form the hooks to Can’t Stop The Clock before it ventures off into almost Eagles-esque soft rock pastures and elegiac yearning for lost youth. Yet this cut-and-shut collage works well because, ultimately, they’ve got the tunes to back up their indulgences. Not to mention some seriously addictive rock hooks, such as the chugging metal riffola on Something Worth Dying For. Fröberg’s true skill, however, is in marrying proggy instrumentation and eclectic patchworks of generic cross-stitching with radio-friendly rock. Someone Else’s Fault resembles a more adventurous Asia, and suggests that while he’s still going strong with the Flower Kings, the potential for this project is still far from exhausted.

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.