King Crimson: Islands

Islands

Best song: I can tolerate Sailor’s Tale

Worst song: Ladies of the Road (but any of the vocal tracks really)

Overall grade: 2

A huge round of congratulations to King Crimson, whose hard work has finally paid off as they make history to become the first band on my site to be given a grade of 2, a grade that I don’t give out lightly, as I’m an optimist and I generally try to look for the good in music (hence why I consider myself to like any album with a 3 or above.) But sometimes a band just goes above and beyond and achieves a terrible feat: an album which, despite the skill and potential of all players involved, I struggle to listen to all the way through.

From this record, I just get the impression that the band don’t really care about what they’re doing. Robert Fripp is not interested in writing good songs and nobody seems to care about performing anything, they’ve become lazy. No wonder this was the last album Fripp recorded with these musicians.

Pete Sinfield has stopped with the pseudo-intellectual lyricism that hurt the previous two albums and instead has moved onto something even worse; trying to write cock-rock lyrics. Seriously, take a look at these from ‘Ladies of the Road’: 'Said would I like to taste hers / And even craved the flavour / Like marron-glaced fish bones / Oh lady, hit the road!'

The arrangements are uninspired and even in the songs that progress somewhat (‘Islands’, I’m NOT looking at you) nothing here ever surprises me. Nobody involved (Fripp excepted) is any kind of a virtuoso and so most of the time they just don’t have the capabilities to bring the compositions to life. The instrumentals are an exception; they at least have interesting passages, while the others have a varied mixture of boring sections and unlistenably terrible sections – for an example of this, see the end of ‘Formentara Lady’ or the sax-dominated part of ‘The Letters’. Or don’t, and put on ‘In the Court’ instead.

Vaguely interesting fact: parts of ‘Letters’ are actually lifted directly from a song ‘Why Don’t You Just Drop In’ by Fripp’s pre-Crimson band, Giles, Giles & Fripp. Also, the cover’s really pretty. It’s a picture of an actual cluster of stars out in space – I think it’s part of the Sagittarius constellation? Put this album on your wall and you’ll love it.

Thing I don’t understand: Steven Wilson refused to do any more Emerson, Lake & Palmer remasters after ‘Tarkus’ because he allegedly didn’t like them as much as the other bands he was working on. Yet, he was quite happy to work on ‘Islands’! Seriously? Any 70s ELP album is better than this. Except ‘Love Beach’.

I don’t really hold this against Robert Fripp. I did for a while, but now I’m quite happy to pretend that ‘Islands’ never existed and the band moved straight from ‘Lizard’ to ‘Larks’ Tongues in Aspic’. Better for all involved, since there’s plenty of other things we c an get mad at Fripp for - like spending his concerts mindlessly creating feedback instead of playing actual songs.