8 Toronto-based musician Nadjiwan's latest album, Star Nation, tells a mighty tale of a journey from Earth to distant planets and back. It opens hopefully, feeling like sun streaming through a foggy dawn, all cymbals and faint piano — aptly, the opening track is called "Into the Abyss" — and closes with pomp and grandeur, with a roaring tune called, aptly again, "Homecoming." It's a unique and electric, familiar but different experience that Star Nation shares, one clothed masterfully in prog rock splendour, and elevated by the heft of project mastermind Marc Meriläinen's perspective and knowledge. Part genre reinvention — recalling but also crucially reimagining something like, say,