Best song: Cat Food
Worst song: Cadence And Cascade
Overall grade: 5
It’s really difficult to
know how to grade this. (Of course, by the time you read this, I have graded it
and you already know what grade I’ve given it, because you read from left to
right and top to bottom like a normal person, but I don’t write in order. In
fact, I’ve already written the closing paragraph for this. Bet that freaks you
out.) Anyway, how I grade this really comes down to the age old question of
what makes an album good. On the one hand, you have the problems everyone else
talks about, the fact that this album
didn’t make any stylistic leaps or do anything the debut hadn’t, so logic says
it should be weaker. However, if I don’t think too hard, if I just close my
eyes and let the music sink in, I find I like this one nearly as much as ‘In
the Court’.
Well, whichever way is
right, ‘Cat Food’ is the best song. Seemingly random tinkly piano lines, a
super fun melody that keeps jumping around, and the least pretentious line Pete
Sinfield would ever write: ‘Cat food, cat food, cat food again’. Its jazz influences
make it feel improvised, as if the band were just jamming in the studio but it
turned out so good that they decided to put it on the album.
It says something that
the worst song is as pretty and melodic as ‘Cadence And Cascade’. But it is the
worst, because it’s the most obvious ‘Court’ copy, and because Gordon Haskell
sings on it. I’ve nothing against Gordon Haskell, but he’s not Greg Lake, and I
love Greg Lake’s voice. It sounds like springtime and childhood and driving
home late at night after a perfect evening. So you can understand that with him
singing on everything around this, I don’t enjoy it quite as much.
I can’t say I really
count the little ‘Peace’ sections as songs/a song. They don’t have a place and
a part of me thinks they’re just there to add variety and differentiate this
album from its predecessor. But they’re very forgettable, and I have no idea
how any of them go (and I’m listening to the last one right now). ‘Pictures of
a City’ I like though; especially the stop start bits, really quiet bits that
you have to strain to hear - but they ARE there – and the freaking awesome
squealing guitar ending, and it’s quite easy to ignore the ‘Schizoid Man’
similarities.
The title track strikes
a balance between lyrics that make me cringe and a Mellotron part that makes me
really happy. If you don’t care about lyrics and you liked ‘Epitaph’, you’ll
like this. And the only other song is the multipart epic ‘The Devil’s Triangle’,
which is pretty well developed because the band had been playing it live for a
while already. It’s instrumental (boo! hiss! No Lake!) and based off an old
orchestral suite which I don’t actually know. I like to imagine that the nightmarish
atmosphere of this comes from the original, but other things like the structured
sound collage and the hints of psychedelic rock are of this band’s doing.
I guess my main point
is, all flaws aside, I’m glad this album exists. It does have its own identity
in some places and there’s much to keep even a casual KC fan happy. I also
might recommend it to people who are fans of bands like Genesis who are on the
symphonic side of prog, as this is probably the least heavy record Crimson ever
did.
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