Album Reviews

With their matching white outfits, immaculately coiffed locks, and over the top stage presence, Angel were a band ready to take the technicolor seventies by storm, and their ’75 debut easily ranks high among the greats of the decade’s American pomp ‘n’ rollers. With the heavenly helium-fueled vocals of Frank DiMino, crunchy axework of poutin’ Punky Meadows, and Greg Giuffra’s laser-blasting synths, there’s nothing shy or restrained about the Angel sound. Angel leads off with a pair of 7 minute epics in the fantasy chronicle “The Tower” and plaintive “Long Time,” before kicking into the stage-stormin’ “Rock and Rollers.” The heavy groove of “Broken Dreams,” dramatic ballad “Mariner,” king sized riffs of “Sunday Morning” and heroic “On and On” keep side two moving, and the band bids farewell with the brief instrumental, “Angel (Theme).” Not unlike Styx, a band who took the same formula to greater success, Angel deftly walk the tightrope bridging grandiosity and heaviosity throughout this stellar set. –Ben

This largely acoustic set composed entirely of covers is an interesting offering from Mr Cooder and various buddies. It looks like he wanted to collaborate with musicians specializing in traditional styles of popular music. The fact that he chooses to record two songs by Leadbelly, himself one of America’s great folk musicians, reinforces this notion. The hybrid “Always Lift Him Up/Kanaka Wai Wai” brings together a wonderfully positive gospel-sounding song from West Virginia and guitar music from Hawaii. “He’ll Have to Go” features some lovely “Tex-Mex” style accordion playing that almost gives the song a french flavor. There is some sensuous Polynesian music in “Yellow Roses” and “Chloe”. It’s a clever album by someone who obviously has a deep love for and great knowledge of popular music. The singing sometimes lets the quality down a little, but the musicianship, arrangements and production are almost faultless. For sheer listening pleasure this one is hard to beat. –Jim

Post-Hendrix bluesy power trios have a tendency to put competency over inspiration, attempting to match Hendrix’s technique without considering his tunefulness or his essential emphasis on feel. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination or style to put out a solid blues-rock album so long as you learn your instrument and learn it well. But once in a while this form finds some unique angle to exploit. Bridge of Sighs is a case in point. Former Procol Harum guitar whiz Trower uses a bank of effects pedals to produce a swirling, oceanic sound with sustain that hangs in the air for hours: lithe and surprisingly light of touch for the music’s intensity, his style on this album should have guitarheads frothing at the mouth. Singer/bassist James Dewar is no slouch, either, sounding rather like Paul Rodgers in a lower register, and anchoring Trower’s waves of sound firmly in the blues. The title track is a wonderful, atmospheric dirge-like thing, and closer “Little Bit of Sympathy” is another standout. It’s a stylish and well produced album, Trower is a pretty amazing guitar player with a strong sense of melody and an uncanny ability to do a lot with few notes, and those whose appetite for good guitar albums is never sated should definitely pick this up. –Will

Rides Again is an interesting album. It comes at the dawn of hard rock following on the heels of the psychedelic blues rock revolution. The album itself is half hard rock, where the influence of Zeppelin can be heard, and half something else, more akin to CSN or Neil Young. The album opens in fine form with the classic blues hook, “Funk #49.” “Woman” is another great hard-rocker, followed by the experimental suite “The Bomber” containing a neat interpretation of Ravel’s “Bolero.” The second side starts off quietly. “Tend my Garden” has some of the harmonies associated with CSN. This song fades into “Garden Gate,” an acoustic piece which finds Joe Walsh asking questions. “There I Go Again” is an annoyingly catchy song which features some great pedal steel guitar from guest Rusty Young. “Ashes the Rain and I” closes the album in thoughtful, almost sad, fashion. Dale Peters plays six string on this one and orchestration is added by Jack Nitzsche. It seemed to be de rigueur for US artists of the time to have Nitzsche orchestrate something for them…still it’s tastefully done. The material on this album is very varied, surprisingly hard and, at times, surprisingly progressive. –Jim

I always gauge a professed Led Zep fan by their attitude to this record. If they say they find it weak, boring, soft, folky, then you pretty much say they’re fairweather friends who just want the hammer to drop, and would be much more at home with Black Sabbath or Uriah Heep. Fact is, Led Zep’s folk (and world music) inclinations weren’t some sort of add-on bonus; folk is at the heart of what the band is all about. Just listen to the first two records, which boast “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”, “Black Mountain Side” (a straight retread of Bert Jansch’s “Black Waterside”), “Ramble On”, “Thank You”, “Your Time Is Gonna Come” and even “What Is And What Should Never Be”. In each of these songs, Celtic folk is a crucial element. Essential to Zeppelin, too, is the sense of mystery that comes from the folk tradition, the sense of the past in the present, that the otherworld (whether it be the supernatural or the Christian tradition) is just around the corner — what Bob Dylan once summed up affectionately as “songs about death and vegetables”. (And I’m reminded it was Dylan who informed us that “mystery is a fact”.)
So. Led Zeppelin III. Written and recorded, not in a frenzy of activity, as the first two albums had been, but in a more relaxed frame of mind, with Plant and Page actually decamping to Bron-Y-Aur, a small cottage in rural Wales, to write together. No wonder, then, that this is a mellower album than its predecessors. Not that you’d know it when you drop the needle on the record. “Immigrant Song” explodes into being, with Plant’s wail initiating us into the new world. The first two albums had begun with songs about sex; this one is about a mythical past, with Plant taking on the persona of a Viking warrior, ready to meet his companions in Valhalla (that is, in death). All hitched to one of the most brutal riffs this side of “Black Dog”. And then it’s over. Can it really be only two minutes’ long? It feels like we’ve glimpsed an entire world in that time.

Sometimes seen as just that record between the hard rock milestones of II and the self titled fourth album, it’s much more than that. In a way, it’s the culmination of the journey undertaken on the first two records, as well as the beginning of a new one that will last for the rest of the band’s career. Put simply, all the branches Zep will follow from now on can be traced to the seeds laid on III, whether it’s the orchestral majesty of “Kashmir” (with its template of “Friends”), the medieval tone to “No Quarter” or “The Battle Of Evermore”, or the slow burners of “Stairway” or “In My Time Of Dying”. Idiot American reviewers sometimes claim that with this album Zep were trying to jump on the Crosby, Stills & Nash soft rock bandwagon, yet a quick look at the English scene of 1969-70 shows that Zeppelin’s influences were Pentangle, Fairport Convention (compare III with Liege And Lief) and even Nick Drake. Actually, “influences” may be the wrong word; like any great band Zeppelin simply tied into the zeitgeist of the times, and discovered that its strains ran deep in its own DNA. –Brad