Album Reviews

Love “Four Sail” (1969)

When people talk about Arthur Lee and Love, it’s generally not Four Sail they’re talking about. A pity – because this album is just as crucial as the first three “classic-lineup” records – albeit for slightly different reasons. Some would argue that Love lost much of the magic that initially drew listeners in after the career-defining Forever Changes – that Lee had nothing left to say and nowhere to go. An understandable stance, in light of his already significant achievements, but simply not true.

Four Sail features a completely re-tooled lineup – with a more muscular power trio augmenting Lee’s still ornate songwriting sensibilities. While the new band works squarely in the zone of the changing times (post-Hendrix acid-blues virtuosity), there are more than enough of Lee’s trademark flamenco guitar lines and intuitive songwriting twists and turns to mark this as something that could only be a Love album. Frankly, it’s exciting to hear his singular instincts applied to a new model, and to their credit, the band run with it, sounding vital and electric, re-animating some of the scrappy garage-band energy that made “Seven And Seven Is” so invigorating. Incredibly, Lee’s fragile humanism still manages to cut through the din, scaling new emotional heights in songs like “Robert Montgomery” and “Always See Your Face.” One of the things that set Love apart, and that remains undissipated here, was Lee’s fearlessness in laying his heart and soul out for the crushing, conveying the joy and terror of the human experience in ways that few dared, or would have had the eloquence to articulate. Things would go downhill pretty quickly for Lee after this, but Four Sail remains the defiant last stand of a formidable creative mind, still capable of flipping the script and brokering triumph out of dissolution. —Jon Treneff

Vanilla Fudge “Renaissance” (1968)

Renaissance has a dense, intense sound that permeates every track. It is an emotional whirlpool – the introspection of “Thoughts”, the triumph of “Thats What Makes A Man”, the bliss of “Paradise”, the desperation of “The Sky Cried When I Was A Boy”, to the utter horror of “The Spell That Comes After”. Played a high volume, the overwhelming climax on “The Spell That Comes After” will plaster you to the back wall whilst the poem in the middle of “Season of the Witch” will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. The album has a consistency of style throughout from the opening crash to the spooky whistled signature of “the beat goes on” at the end, always intense and often at the point of mental and physical breakdown. Blistering guitar drenched in Hammond organ pumped through a wall of Leslie speakers backed by one of the best rhythm sections ever, not to mention Mark Stein’s powerful emotional vocal.

No other record sounds like this record, it is truely unique. —Tony

Bob Welch “French Kiss” (1977)

Following a brief affair with heavy rock on the pair of Paris releases, Bob Welch puckers up and lands a solo soft rock triumph on French Kiss. While some of that guitar crunch remains, it and Welch’s trademark baked goods vocals are wrapped in silky disco strings and dance floor beats throughout the mesmerizingFrench Kiss. The LP finds Welch as a post-hippie playboy on the prowl through irrepressible entries like the alluring “Ebony Eyes,” “Hot Love, Cold World,” and the Fleetwood/McVie/Buckingham assisted infatuation of “Easy to Fall” and “Sentimental Lady,” originally cut for the Mac’s Bare Trees. Elsewhere the disco-rockin’ “Carolene,” funky “Outskirts,” vintage Welch space-drifter “Danchiva” and sunny Claifornia dreamin’ duo of “Lose my Heart” and “Lose Your Heart” only serve to solidify the album’s appeal – rare is the seventies softie that never dips in quality, all while delivering the lounge lizard magic in such spot-on fashion as on French Kiss. —Ben

AC/DC “Highway to Hell” (1979)

1979’s Highway to Hell is Australian Proto-Metal/Hard Rock band AC/DC’s high water mark. And last album ever recorded with their fantastic original Vocalist, Bon Scott. There is nothing fancy or the least bit pretentious here. this album is raw, driving, in your face Hard and Heavy Guitar Rock. Some of the greatest and most powerful songs AC/DC ever recorded over a long career are right here. Including the amazing, simmering ode to danger and terror Night Prowler, and the epic aggro-fest If You Want Blood You Got It. Then there’s the blazing and unrepentant title track, the snarling Shot Down In Flames and raunchy Love Hungry Man. If You only own one AC/DC album it needs to be Highway To Hell, this defines the word classic. —Karl

Miroslav Vitous “Magical Shepherd” (1976)

Magical Shepherd is one of the most significant releases in mid ’70’s electro fusion jazz music, and ironically remains largely unrecognised. It is most decidedly unlike anything that else Miroslav Vitous recorded, with funky bass lines and extensive tape looping. A collaboration with Herbie Hancock, Magical Shepherd expands beyond the usual format of fusion jazz at the time, and ends up (on side one at least) producing sounds more reminiscent of modern house and jungle music (check out the use of the disco beats and loops in New York city). The atmospheric vocals by Cheryl Grainger and Onike would fit nicely into any recordings by Goldie. I cannot recommend this album highly enough.

If you like electro fusion jazz and do not have a copy, then your life is the poorer for such an omission. If you like Herbie Hancock’s electro fusion work then this album is compulsory listening. I have played it extensively on my Radio program and have always received calls from local club DJs amazed at the existence of the recording. As coordinator of [my station’s] Jazz Show it has become my personal mission to ensure that this recording gets the wide recognition that it deserves. —Peter

Peter Green “The End of the Game” (1970)

Where has this album been all my life? I’ve heard a lot of Peter Green, but never anything quite like this. Free-form jazz/rock – hard psych – blues-rock with some of the most wicked guitar work you’ll ever hear. In fact, all of the musicians put on amazing performances, even though Green’s blistering guitar is the stand-out.

Each track here is instrumental, and each carries its own flavor. The opener, Bottom’s Up, features a driving blues-rock jam with Green running cricles around his fretboard. Timeless Time is slower, more psychedelic in nature, with a slight avant-garde jazz feeling. Descending scale is another psychedelic workout that’s more like a trip than a song, with each player finding room to explore. Burnt Foot is a more straight ahead, driving heavy blues rock piece with some heavy drumming and killer bass lines. Hidden Game starts out sounding almost like mid 70’s jammin’ Grateful Dead, with Green’s guitar tone eerily like Jerry’s. Then the song slows down and becomes yet another psychedelic soaked ride, reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s more piano dominated tracks, with a slow yet wicked solo. The final cut, and title track, The End of the Game, is simply a masterpiece. Green and company break out the free-form element in the extreme. Green’s guitar howls, moans, wails, cries and even sighs, all the while surrounded by hazy bass and crashing, scattered drumming.

However impressed I had been with the great guitar work of Mr. Peter Green, after hearing this gem of an album I’m even more impressed. Highly recommended. —Doug

Paul Kantner & Jefferson Starship “Blows Against the Empire” (1970)

If you’re an Airplane fan, you want to give this one a try. Yes, this is the earliest album to use the “Jefferson Starship” name, but it’s not the first official Starship album, this is simply a Paul Kantner solo project in between Airplane albums (Volunteers, Bark) with an all-star cast of musicians helping out with the name Jefferson Starship (including several Airplane members like Grace Slick, Jack Casady, Joey Covington as well as three Dead members, Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart, plus David Crosby and Graham Nash, and ex-Quicksilver Messenger member and future Airplane/Jefferson Starship member David Freiberg, plus Peter Kaukonen, Jorma’s brother). The Airplane at this point was in flux having just lost Marty Balin and Spencer Dryden, so this gave Kantner the idea for a solo project. Luckily the music has much more in common with the Airplane sound circa Volunteers, so if you’re fearing a precursor to the Red Octopus sound, don’t worry, Pete Sears and Craig Chaquico ain’t here! Not to mention no Papa John Creach. To me, Blows Against the Empire is one of the last great West Coast psych albums. 1970 was obviously difficult times for the counterculture, as it was pretty much on decline, no doubt helped by the Kent State shootings, so this album was basically about a bunch of hippies who hijack a starship to sail off to the stars because they no longer feel welcomed on Earth. The album was nominated for a sci-fi Hugo Award, but didn’t win. Strange that an album of recorded music would be nominated by such an award.

“The Baby Tree” is a silly little folk-number about babies growing on trees while “Let’s Go Together” sounds like a missing number from Volunteers. “A Child is Coming” is a nice pleasant acoustic number, which seemed to coincide to Grace Slick having a child that was to be born (China Kantner). “Hijack” is a totally wonderful epic number, where the band almost enters prog rock territory near the end with some wonderful use of piano. There’s a couple of short pieces that simulate the sounds of a starship taking off, oddly they remind me of such Krautrock groups of the time like Ash Ra Tempel or early Tangerine Dream. “Have You Seen the Stars Tonight” is the group exploring space rock with spacy psychedelic effects. It reminds me a tad of Crosby, Stills & Nash, but then Crosby and Nash do appear on this album. “Starship” sounds like how the Dead and Airplane might sound like if they teamed together as you hear a strong Dead/Airplane sound to this piece (not to mention Jerry Garcia giving his trademark lead guitars).

A totally wonderful, if often underrated album of West Coast psychedelia which I highly recommend. —Ben

Diga Rhythm Band “Diga” (1976)

In each of Mickey Hart’s albums, the artist submerges himself within a concept and reinvents himself through the project dujour. Hart’s rhythmic journey as recorded in the studio has created some duds and crafted some gems. Fortunately, the Diga Rhythm Band produced one of his jewels. In this project, Hart’s focus was on the sounds of India. That written, vibes and marimbas are the primary musical instruments on “Diga” -neither of which are Indian and no attempt is made to have them play Indian melodies. The absence of sitars on such a project almost seems odd. Unless the listener is expecting classical Indian sounds, this isn’t necessarily a drawback. With respect to authenticity, Mickey Hart always produces his albums in a way that makes ethnic music more accessible to Western ears. In other words, this isn’t Indian music, it’s really World Music. When it came to the sounds of India, Hart’s focus was on rhythm; the tablas are the main vehicle. ‘Razooli’ sounds like it could be an outtake from the Grateful Dead’s “Blues for Allah.” ‘Sweet Sixteen’ is so sugary, it’s difficult not to describe it as ‘World Pop.’ Jerry Garcia plays ‘Happiness Is Drumming’ as if it were a prototype version of ‘Fire on the Mountain.’ In terms of rhythm, ‘Magnificent Sevens’ is the most accomplished composition. The song showcases the group’s improvisation within the Diga Rhythm Band’s most challenging arrangement. As a drum album, the percussion is stellar thanks in part to Zakir Hussain’s nimble hands. Easy to listen to, “Diga” delivers Indian infused World Music. —The Delite Rancher

Quicksilver Messenger Service “Shady Grove” (1969)

The first two Quicksilver albums are among the classics of the era. No doubt about it. They had a great talent for long, exploratory jams that really took you on that acid trip. When Gary Duncan left after 1968, it looked like the end. He was such an integral part of the band, how could they continue without him. Well, only the addition of a world class musician could save the band and that’s what happened when Nicky Hopkins, who had been living in San Francisco and recording with Steve Miller and Jefferson Airplane, decided to actually join a band. What an honor for Quicksilver that he chose them.

Okay, look, there’s no way this album could sound the same. But, that’s what’s great about bands…people come, people go, the music changes, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. This album has none of the feel of the first two but it stands on its own as a fine recording. From the opening Hopkins blast on Shady Grove, to the achingly beautiful drawing room/salon type solo on Flute Song, to the countrified leanings of David Freiberg on Words Can’t Say, right up to the grandiloquent opening to the ultimate Hopkins opus, Edward, the Mad Shirt Grinder, this album has a lot going on musically. Many Quicksilver enthusiasts dismiss this album because Hopkins so thoroughly dominates the proceedings as to make the band almost secondary. That may be true, but the results are still extraordinary. —Sekander

Charles Mingus “Let My Children Hear Music” (1972)

One of the more convincing attempts to fuse jazz with classical. Certainly an unusual album, even by Mingus’s standards (witness the sampling of an elephant in full-trumpet) but it seems to hold together in spite of the potential for catastrophe. There’s so much going on here that, however meticulously composed it may be, at times one can’t help thinking of the opening moments of Coltrane’s free-jazz masterpiece Ascension. Everyone of the instruments here is doing something worthy of attention at all times but there’s little one-upmanship. It is a collaborative effort if ever there was one. This is orchestral jazz in the most literal form. Musically there are times when it is considerably leaning more to the classical side of things than jazz, although classical in a cinematic sense. When you expect brooding horn swells, you’re never far from swinging brass bombast, and vice versa. If this is music for children, it’s for a darker kind of children’s story. The musical accompaniment to Mingus’s spoken-word story on The Chill of Death isn’t unlike an alternative film score for The Wizard of Oz, all dramatic flourishes and atmosphere in abundance, with moments of black humour throughout.

This is not a Mingus album for the jazz or Mingus neophyte, nor is it necessarily one for anyone who enjoyed Ah Um and Pithecanthropus and is looking for their next port of call. It isn’t typical of the works for which Mingus is most remembered. It is worth noting, however, that this is the album that Mingus himself was most happy with. If you trust the man’s judgement, you might find this being one of your favourites too. —Jaime

The Electric Prunes “Mass in F Minor” (1968)

The album works almost as one long song filled with dynamic psychedelic jams with Gregorian chants, searing guitar leads, string and horn sections, and a pounding rhythm section. [The album’s producer] David Axelrod’s “Song of Innocence” comes to mind with the fusion of psychedelic guitar and orchestral arrangements and one could consider this to be Axelrod’s first album because this music is clearly his vision and influence. However, “Mass in F Minor” is far more rock influenced as each song rises and falls emotionally with horn and string sections embellishing the guitar chords rather than vice versa (which, I believe to be the case on “Song of Innocence). The buildup of the entire album climaxes with the final guitar chords of “Agnus Dei” and mark the closing ceremony of a truly unforgettable and holy music experience.

As a fan of out-there, experimental psychedelic rock from the late 60’s, “Mass in F Minor” strikes a chord with me in ways that other Electric Prunes albums can’t. Sure, those garage psych songs from their previous albums are great, but it’s hard for them to really stand out above the rest of all the other garage psych albums of the time as it was such a common sound. There isn’t a category for psychedelic concept albums simulating a church experience. For those who enjoy the more experimental parts of the Chocolate Watchband, H.P. Lovecraft, Ultimate Spinach, David Axelrod, USA, Beacon Street Union or Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies (just a few off the top of my head), do yourselves a favor and brush aside the mainstream reviews of the more “level-headed” rock fan and check this out. —Coldchisel/RYM

Peter Hammill “The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage” (1974)

The absolute pinnacle of Peter Hammill’s solo career. The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage is every bit as impressive as the finest records from Van der Graaf Generator, although with most members of the (temporarily-defunct) Generator chipping in it’s arguable as to what degree this is a true solo album. Many of the tracks here are especially reminiscent of the intense vocal/sax-centric sound featured on the upcoming Generator classics Godbluff and Still Life, and fans of either of those albums will almost certainly love this release. Yet Silent Corner is a somewhat different kind of album than Hammill ever produced with the Generator. Every song here is extremely “intimate”, be it via deeply personal lyrics or via a stripped down production that brings everything back to Hammill’s voice. It’s also an extremely “weird” and “difficult” album, even compared to the average Generator release (only Pawn Hearts compares here). Bizarre lyrics, sudden shifts in dynamic, and absolutely no percussion until track four(!!!)- after dozens of listens there are parts of this album that I’m still trying to “figure out”. Yet before I scare away all but the most devout prog rock fans, let me emphasize that this album is totally worth your effort. A true classic of progressive music that repeatedly rewards the thoughtful listener via a wealth of magnificent details.

As for the tracks themselves, Silent Corner is bookended by what are arguably the two finest tracks of Hammill’s solo career: “Modern” and “A Louse Is Not a Home”. The first of those tracks contributes one of the most memorable opening sequences of any album from my collection, gradually developing into a glorious mindfuck of a song that perfectly epitomizes Mr. Hammill’s unique musical vision. The latter of those two tracks is representative of the record’s Generator-esque tendencies- a 10+ minute epic rocker in which Hammill’s energetic vocals are complimented by an equally-remarkable instrumental arrangement. Other highlights include a slow-building piano-driven “ballad” in “Forsaken Gardens” and another Generator-esque rocker in “Red Shift”. Preventing a perfect 5.0 star rating are the relatively straightforward ballads “Wilhelmina” and “Rubicon”, which carry over the “singer/songwriter” aesthetic that was more pronounced on the previous Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night. As with a number of tracks from that earlier album, I find both of these songs to be nice yet remarkably unmemorable.

Alongside the subsequent In Camera, the cornerstone of any Hammill collection. Strongly recommended to any progressive rock enthusiast, and a record that every Van der Graaf Generator fan should seek out. —Paul