King Crimson: Absent Lovers; Live in Montreal 1984

Absent Lovers

Best song: Indiscipline

Worst song: Sartori in Tangier

Overall grade: 6

Prog live albums are hit and miss. Some bands, like Jethro Tull and ELP, made great ones, while other bands like Genesis and Rush didn’t really add anything to their studio versions. King Crimson, similarly, also made hit and miss live albums. Under ‘miss’, see early release Earthbound as well as ThraKattaK. Under ‘hit’, see this one.

The approach Fripp and company took with this release was not to try to tick off material from all stages of their career, and to focus heavily on the New Wave style material that had characterised their three 80s albums, although there were a couple of interludes to play a song each from ‘Lark’s Tongues’ and ‘Red’. This decision gave the concert a more uninterrupted, cohesive feel, so that it’s very clear that you’re listening to the same band all the way through.

Things are brilliant right from the perfectly-timed, gradual build-up of ‘Entry of the Crims’. Robert Fripp must have spent years and years getting this one right. It was worth it, though; he creeps me out no end on this, the kind of creepy that means you can’t quite tear yourself away. It mostly serves as a very extended build up (read: longer than the song itself) to ‘Lark’s Tongues in Aspic, Part III’ as well as mentally preparing the audience for the onslaught to come.

And when it does, it’s fantastic. ‘Lark’s Tongues’ just blows the original out of the water, and it was already the best song on Three. It’s a lightning-fast instrumental that takes all kinds of side bends and U-turns such that you can never quite keep up with it, and any audience member who wasn’t already fully engrossed would have been forced to sit up and pay attention. ‘Lark’s II’ also has its place on Disc 2 of the record, although personally I would have liked to hear the two songs played back to back, to hear the callbacks between the two juxtaposed against the very different musical styles. Still, both are individually fascinating too.

The other song from the 70s days, ‘Red’, doesn’t stick out as much as it should. Adrian Belew and Tony Levin adding their own twists to the song bring it more up to date with the newer stuff, and the less studio-precise live setting makes the recent material feel more classic, and all in all ‘Red’ blends in pretty well. If ‘Starless’ had been included, I probably would have written it off as something too sacred to be messed with, but although I love the original ‘Red’ I actually equally appreciate this new version, although I still can’t see it as the definitive version of the song.

 The other two 80s albums of King Crimson, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair, are distinctively average. Very listenable, but without the idiosyncrasies that made Discipline such a success. And yet put in this live context, a lot of them shine just as much as that favourite of mine does. In fact, it makes picking a best song incredibly hard, since there’s the difficulty of whether to pick, say, ‘Indiscipline which was an already amazing song made even better, or something like ‘Industry’ which so wildly improves on its studio version that it takes on a whole other life.

 Interestingly enough, there are no true improvisations here (just extended sections to some songs), which are certainly what Crimson were famous for earlier in their career. I wonder, if I went to a King Crimson show and everything was drawn from pre-written material, would I be disappointed? When the songs are as good as this, it’s hard to say, but I do think that the spontaneous music creation is a big part of the band, and hearing the members play off each other live would definitely be interesting, although as this show was only recorded on one night it would be quite a risk.

I wasn’t a massive fan of ‘Dig Me’ on Three; I see it as a failed experiment, but here, coming in the middle of a section Belew describes as “the weird stuff”, it no longer seems like experimenting for experimenting’s sake and is actually engaging. There’s other good stuff from the same album too: ‘Sleepless’ is literally ruled by Bruford who delivers a stunningly powerful performance, and (as already mentioned) ‘Industry’ which showed serious potential in the studio but only fully comes into its own in the more fleshed-out and atmospheric version we see here.

‘Beat’ is the least represented of the three 80s albums, and while I really enjoy the extended interpretation of ‘Waiting Man’ where all the band members play excellently, my favourite part of ‘Sartori in Tangier’ is the bit where Belew asks the audience if they know any good jokes. Truth be told, nobody plays any worse on this song than anywhere else, but it feels like it was thrown in just to get more representation for the album, and so it feels unnecessary and with so many other good instrumentals on the album, its comparative weaknesses definitely show. Then, lastly, there’s ‘Heartbeat’ which is well placed in the encore for being one of the most conventionally song-orientated and – dare I say it – catchy KC songs ever.

As far as ‘Discipline’ itself goes, its contributions aren’t massively altered – because they don’t need to be - but are just played with more energy, emotion and unpredictability. Doing these detailed songs on a live album requires impeccable production, which is achieved perfectly, especially sticking out on your ‘Indiscipline’ and your ‘Matte Kudasai’.

Overall, I’d have to pick ‘Indiscipline’ as my overall favourite song, simply because I never thought it could be improved upon and yet they still managed. My expectations were so high before hearing it for the first time, but the band exceeded them with their precision playing and involvement in their chillingly slowed-down performance. Yet ‘Thela Hun Ginjeet’ also proves a highlight as Levin takes it and runs with it all over the place, Belew following close behind. And the intense and fast-paced ‘Elephant Talk’ is a perfect grand finale to what must have been a spectacular live show to attend. I can only hope that when the band start playing live again next year, they’re even half as good as this.

All in all, a truly great live album, and one that makes ‘Beat’ and ‘Three of a Perfect Pair’ wholly unnecessary, as you can find everything you need here. It shows no signs of the band getting tired, even though it was the last concert they would play for ten years. Still, I guess it’s not that surprising… after all, Fripp already had experience with going out on a high note.

King Crimson: Discipline

Discipline

Best song: Indiscipline

Worst song: I like them all, but Frame By Frame?

Overall grade: 6

Ah, King Crimson. I’m going to miss reviewing them. A band so inconsistent that they can’t even be consistent in their inconsistency… this album is almost as good as the last one! Of course, it’s allowed, because this came after a seven-year hiatus during which the band was broken up “for good” and during which Robert Fripp was doing solo stuff (which incidentally, is also pretty good) and, unsurprisingly, there’s been another lineup change. Tony Levin has replaced John Wetton on bass and the wonderful Adrian Belew has joined us to play guitar and sing (aren’t we lucky?!)

Seriously, two thirds of the ‘Red’ trio might still be around, but 80s King Crimson is a mile away from that album. There’s still a focus on instrumental work and experimenting, but it’s very much of its time, taking influence from a bunch of other bands who were relatively new at the time, most notably the Talking Heads but also

Songs. There are seven. (I’m not great with sentences today, it seems.) The first one is called ‘Elephant Talk’, and I love it, which is quite strange, because I find Belew’s vocal performance really disturbing – he sounds like he’s out of his mind. The lyrics are great, and it’s not often you can say that about this band. Some electronic backbeats keep you on your toes and it’s all topped off with a guitar sound that’s never been recreated – it’s uncategorisable.

‘Frame By Frame’ is when Levin comes to the fore with some really interesting basswork, but I can’t always hear it so well because Belew is mixed so high. It’s stylistically pretty similar to the opener but a bit more soundscapey and a bit less mind-boggling. ‘Matte Kudasai’ is a bit more slow-tempoed than the two preceding it. It’s got some great sound effects, like the guitars that sound like angry bird cries that pop up occasionally, and it’s surprisingly melodic and emotional, filling the place of the ballad that Crimson like to throw in occasionally to shake things up. A better version can be found in amongst the bonus tracks, that has an interesting guitar part from Fripp worked into it.

Then comes ‘Indiscipline’, and it’s just flat-out crazy, it’s… put it this way, you used to be able to look up the Wikipedia page for ‘Indiscipline’, and there were at least twenty different genres listed for the song, including psychedelic metal, which I’d never even heard of. And all twenty of those genres seemed to fit the song. It’s such a freak-out, with amazingly chaotic and out-of-control instrumental sections interspersed with robotic vocal parts that are almost too… well, disciplined. ‘I repeat myself when under stress’, Belew intones, several times in a row, and it’s pure genius. If you’ve got five minutes to spare and you’re only going to listen to one song from this album, this is definitely the one.

Course, nothing on side two could come close to that. They try, though. Like ‘Thela Hun Ginjeet’ – this is a polyrhythmic song, meaning it is played in two different time signatures simultaneously. (One of my friends told me I didn’t use enough technical terms in my reviews, so that one’s for her.) It’s such a cool effect. However, this is probably the furthest removed from Crimson in their previous incarnations, focusing mostly on the beat and the new short, clipped style. (Is this prog-techno?) In other news, this is the last vocal track on the album, which is a bit of a disappointment. Belew’s my second favourite Crimson vocalist after Lake, and for this material specifically, he probably is the best guy for the job.

In contrast, ‘The Sheltering Sky’, the first of two instrumentals that close the album, is closest to old Crimson – not even 1974-era, but going right back to their roots with ‘In the Court’. It’s probably a bit more easy-listening than anything else here, although it does have just as much substance if you pay attention – some real virtuoso playing and a few world music influences here and there. And the title track lives up to its name by displaying how well and how effortlessly the new band members have fit together, and is a great example of them playing off each other really well.

Overall, the best word I can find to describe this album is paranoid. All these crazy rhythms, they don’t want to stay still for too long, even the notes don’t, so they’re always jumping around and forever looking over their shoulders to check nothing’s coming to get them. There’s so much life in this record – like one day it’s going to jump out of your CD player and become something more than a flat disc.

Whether intentional or not, this was the perfect album for the band to make at the time – it was progressive and just plain weird enough to keep their long-time fans excited and yet relevant and cutting-edge enough to bring them to a whole new audience. On their next two albums, they tried to achieve this balance again, but found themselves focusing more on current trends than their own legacy, and this album remains as the only surviving studio document of the fusion of the two styles.

 (I should have done The Who today but I’m doing this instead, in celebration of the fact that KING CRIMSON ARE REFORMING! I could not be more excited about this and I’m just really hoping I get the chance to see them. The Who tomorrow.)

King Crimson: Red

Red

Best song: Starless

Worst song: Providence

Overall grade: 6

Some people say King Crimson should have stopped here; should have gone out in a blaze of glory with this unrivalled masterpiece instead of degenerating into the relentless dissonant guitar jammings that defined their 90s work. Now, the existence of ‘Discipline’ means I will never share that view, but I can understand it. Crimson had achieved the impossible and had created a second record on the same level as ‘In the Court’, and they were quite plainly never going to do it a third time – plus, the idea that these two records could start and end their career was certainly a compelling one.

This record actually follows the same pattern as ‘In the Court’, interestingly. It has three great songs on the first side, followed by a pretty awful one at the start of side two, and then the best song of all to close. And if it wasn’t for that one terrible mess, I’d have no problem giving this album the top grade of 7. But ‘Court’ only achieved that because of its status as probably one of the top ten most influential albums of all time, and ‘Red’ doesn’t quite have that same legacy, so a 6 it remains.

The music here is the combination of everything this band have done, ever: it’s got the freshness of the debut and the feeling that it’s like nothing that had ever been heard before, it’s the amazing songwriting and heavy style of ‘Lark’s Tongues’ and the confidence and technical proficiency of ‘Starless & Bible Black’.

The title track opens the record and acts as a kind of instrumental overture, summing up the overall feel of the album: dark and eerie, not in an atmospheric way but in how tight and relentless it all is.  Track two, ‘Fallen Angel’ creates another parallel with the debut in being lighter in contrast and more lyrically/vocally based (no Greg Lake though, sadly) although don’t listen to it hoping for anything like ‘I Talk To The Wind’, because this one slowly descends into anarchy for its dissonant middle section, before coming up to the surface again as a brief respite in the next verse, before ducking back under for its big finish, which is angry and determined at the same time.

If you’re still not sold on my insistence that Bill Bruford is the best ever rock drummer, final proof comes in the form of ‘One More Red Nightmare’. Its purposefulness and precision sends a shiver down my spine. But my favourite part is actually the wacky guitar solo that starts about three minutes in, perfectly capturing the surreal terror of a nightmare.

‘Providence’ is a waste of vinyl space, plain and simple. ‘Moonchild’ on their first album at least had the redeeming quality that it began as a proper song for the first three minutes, but this one skips that part and heads straight for the aimless ambling around section. The only thing it has which improves on that other song is that this one is slightly shorter. People who like ‘Moonchild’: all this is your fault. I hope you’re happy with yourself.

But I promise you that as soon as it’s over you’ll have forgotten all about it, because it launches right into the culmination of Crimson’s career so far, ‘Starless’, a breathtakingly energetic and virtuosic piece of music that puts every second of its twelve minutes to good use. Officially, the band had been reduced to a kind of warped power trio by this point, but here they make use of lots of extra musicians (and a lot of overdubs) to create the dense texture that characterises this piece. It’s obvious that Fripp intended the piece to be a summary of his career thus far, its jazzy sections giving a nod to ‘Lizard’ and its heavy use of Mellotron a throwback to ‘In the Court’/’In the Wake’, even while it goes further than they ever have before in its dramatic mood changes and constant messing with your mind. I have no problem calling this one of the best, most well-arranged songs I’ve ever heard.

This is absolutely essential listening for everyone. You might not be quite the same afterwards, but it’ll be worth it.

King Crimson: Starless & Bible Black

Starless and Bible Black

Best song: The Mincer? maybe?

Worst song: one of the first three or the title track. I’ll say The Great Deceiver

Overall grade: 4

After finally, finally living up to their original potential with the release of ‘Lark’s Tongues’, the mighty Crim were right back in the studio recording the followup. Unfortunately, they only had about 20 minutes worth of material. Not the kind of people to let that minor problem deter them from their goal of releasing wildly inconsistent records every year, they set to work playing random improvisations until they hit on a few that they thought would polarise opinions enough to be put on an album.

I don’t like the first couple of minutes of ‘Great Deceiver’ – the melody seems forced and awkward, but it picks up in energy as it moves on. In the same way, ‘Lament’ takes quite a long time to get going, and the slow beginning part doesn’t capture my attention at all (this incarnation of King Crimson is good at LOUD AND INTENSE. On this album they’re often neither of those things, which works occasionally, eg. Trio, and fails often, eg. here.)

‘We’ll Let You Know’ is a pretty short instrumental and probably interests me the least out of all of them. It’s played very staccato all the way through and there’s a lot of beats that are just silence, an effect that’s used to extremes and causes none of the piece to really flow, so it’s not a particularly satisfying listen. In fact, it’s not until ‘The Night Watch’ that a track I really like appears; the quietly deranged vocal of that song an album highlight and its guitar solo noteworthy despite being fairly conventional.

Another really awesome track is ‘Trio’. It’s an improvised instrumental which might be about trying to find your way while lost in the jungle, or that might just be my interpretation, who knows. Funny anecdote about this song: Bill Bruford has a writing credit on it, which doesn’t seem strange at all until you realise there is no percussion. Apparently, his spontaneous decision not to add any was a really integral part of the song – and I completely agree. It must take a lot of restraint to not start playing when everyone else is jamming away, but I think he made the right decision, because I can’t imagine drums improving the track in any way. The mellotron and violin based piece doesn’t sound like most of this Crimson incarnation, but it’s nevertheless quite stunning.

‘The Mincer’ is menacing and brilliant. Its dissonance and general atmosphere mean I never feel quite safe while listening to it; it’s anything but background music – it’s the kind of thing that if it was played in a film, you’d be paranoid and on edge and you wouldn’t quite know why. It moves through a few different genres including a jazzy section and a more rocking one and includes a searing and unique John Wetton bassline. It ends not with a true ending, but at the point where the tape ran out during recording, and though that finish always throws me, I’m very glad they didn’t throw it out and start again.

Of the two long-form improvisations on the second side, I, like most people, prefer ‘Fracture’. I hear I’m in good company – Robert Fripp likes that one too. And why shouldn’t he? His guitar playing is literally on fire. I mean, it’s a really technical song, and I don’t think it’s meant to bring a tear to your eye unless you’re trying to play it and failing miserably, but damn can Fripp play, and I don’t mind him basically ripping off the structure of ‘Lark’s Tongues, pt.2’ if he keeps using those crazy time signatures and insanely fast chord switches. There’s absolutely no way he made this up on the spot. At over eleven minutes it doesn’t leave me breathless throughout, but there are enough sections that do to make it worthwhile.

The title track is more what you’d expect from an improvisation, with everybody playing well but nobody coming up with any ideas that really make you go ‘wow!’ In the words of Steven Wilson when he put out an album composed entirely of studio jams; “file under self-indulgent”.

I don’t think there’s a single song on this album that I could ever love unconditionally, but I have a LOT of respect for all these guys as instrumentalists and songwriters, and sometimes they earn that respect. Still, I mostly see this as a stopgap to prevent the band from releasing two classic albums in a row, which obviously just wouldn’t do. 

King Crimson: Larks' Tongues in Aspic

Larks’ Tongues in Aspic

Best song: Exiles

Worst song: Easy Money

Overall grade: 6

King Crimson, the World’s Most Inconsistent Band (trademark and copyright, Robert Fripp, 1969) return from what should have been a career-killing album with their first effort that truly matches up to the brilliance of ‘In the Court’. Between ‘Islands’ and this one, the group has changed beyond recognition, with Fripp rightfully firing everyone he’d previously worked with and bringing a bunch of replacements on board, most notably ex-Family bassist John Wetton and ex-Yes drummer Bill Bruford. And so this band, who have very little to do with King Crimson at all, both in personnel and in style, hop into the studio and record an album that is, ironically, very worthy of the King Crimson name.

In addition, this is the only one of the three Crimson greats (generally considered to be this, ‘Court’ and ‘Red’) that doesn’t have a completely rotten track. Seriously! The highs aren’t quite as high as the other two, but the lows aren’t even in sight of the lows on the others. It’s a fair payoff, and I’ll take it.

The title track is split into two parts, which bookend the album, and I’d guess they were conceived like this because I’ve tried listening to them side by side, and they don’t flow so well together. Separately they’re a delight, though. The first one is a full band composition, heavier than anything they’ve tackled before, rehearsed sections and improvised sections moving into one another with ease. David Cross’ violin fits perfectly into the mix and the idea of it being one of the ‘core’ instruments rather than having just a token part makes the song stand out from what other bands were doing at the time. It also features Bruford interacting with another percussionist, Jamie Muir, which is pretty awesome, so it’s not just unique in sound but also in the eclectic range of instruments used.

Its immediate followup is the more traditional ‘Book of Saturday’, which is less than half the length of any other song on the record, but still worthy of inclusion. As much as I’d like to reject any post-Lake singer for this band, I have to admit that Wetton’s decent, and it helps that I can actually listen to the lyrics of this song without cringing – hello, new lyricist Richard Palmer-James! From an instrumental point of view, Fripp plays a mean backwards guitar here.

But third track ‘Exiles’ is my pick for highlight: a halfway house between the crazy rulebreaking of ‘Larks Pt 1’ and the safe, unprogressive ‘Book’, and is based around a grand Mellotron intro and the stellar group of musicians using their talents to create a swirling atmosphere rather than a crushing wall of noise. It’s probably easier to get into than the band are generally considered, too. ‘Easy Money’, on the other hand, is my least favourite moment. I’m not completely sure why – in theory all the ingredients are there to make it a great song, and certainly nothing makes me dislike it, but it just doesn’t enthrall me like the other songs do.

‘The Talking Drum’ is a quiet, semi-ambient piece, essentially an extended introduction to the final track, and for these reasons it used to go over my head. It opens with a very, very quiet drum part, and builds in volume so gradually that you hardly notice it doing so. For the first couple of minutes there’s nothing much to grab onto, but with patience the other instruments do come in, violin and piano and guitar playing melodies at odds with one another. It’s an understated, restrained exercise in controlled buildup.

Then there’s a sudden return to the title track, which is the opposite – it’s incredibly in-your-face, fast and powerful. It’s credited solely to Fripp, but there’s no way one person could have come up with all of this. But seemingly he wasn’t content with inventing progressive rock as we know it, he had to do the same thing with progressive metal. It’s highly appropriate that Dream Theater covered the song thirty-six years later; its influence can be felt all over their work. Not built around any kind of melody, it twists and turns round a rollercoaster of guitar riffs and drum patterns until you don’t know which way is up.

Sometimes I can’t quite believe this band is made up of real people. The idea of having the ability to create something like this is overwhelming.

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.

King Crimson: Lizard

Lizard

Best song: Lizard

Worst song: Lizard

Overall grade: 5

I’m very tempted to write two reviews for this album, because it has a really strange quality that not many others do. Sometimes when I listen to it, I love it and I’d put it as possibly their best work. And other times, I think it’s a big old mess and then I don’t know what I ever saw in it. I just can’t seem to make up my mind either way. King Crimson are a very contradictory band, but not usually within the same album.

I’ll start with some facts, because I know I won’t change my mind on these next time I listen… first, the main thing this album is not is another version of the debut, and anyone expecting that (as I’m sure they were at the time) will get a big shock. Everyone always thinks of Crimson as Robert Fripp’s baby, but in actual fact he didn’t do a huge amount of writing on the first album. On the second he did more, but considering how much influence was taken from the debut, I don’t count it. Therefore, this is the first album where Fripp really dominates as a songwriter, and what he does is he takes ‘Cat Food’ and makes it into an entire album. That was an odd little track to start with, so when stretched out to the length of a whole album you can just imagine how eclectic that might sound.

Reasons this album might be KC’s best work: it has a lot of variety and there’s always something going on; a very small portion of passages are dull. Jon Anderson sings on one of these tracks! (Well, part of one.) That’s the first example of Yes giving a member to King Crimson, although they got this one back. Seriously, his voice is great and it really suits the tone of the song. There’s another song, ‘Happy Family’, that I once heard described as a maze, and I can’t think of a more perfect description – it has this whole complicated, where-is-this-going? thing about it, but comes together. Most of the record has a really full sound, lots of instruments playing at once (including some interesting things like a cornet and a cor anglais) which I like – I think of that as the complete opposite to ‘Moonchild’. There’s a strong jazz influence throughout and a balance between the freaky, frightening type of jazz and the fun, happy jazz. The whole thing is very complex and the fact that the band managed to pull off this complexity makes the album a big achievement.

Reasons this album might be a huge mess: No Greg Lake. Okay, I have to get over that, I have to stop comparing Lake-sung Crimson songs to the others. Ignore that point. Real arguments – sometimes the songs seem more like medleys than songs, with a lot of musical ideas that could be interesting but that are just flung together haphazardly. Pete Sinfield’s lyrics are worse than ever. Do not make the mistake of trying to read along while you’re listening… if you’re someone who finds lyrics important, you’ll hate this. ‘Lady of the Dancing Water’ shows the band being less successful with slower material as before – maybe that’s why they went on to move in a heavier direction. It’s not an album you can ever really get used to, you have to work to enjoy it, every time. Not something for when you’re tired. The whole album’s basically an experiment in just how much weirdness the band could get away with. And the biggest negative of all: I have a huge amount of respect for this album, but I could never get emotionally attached to it like I am to ‘Selling England by the Pound’, for instance.

And yes, as I’m sure you’re wondering by now, the best song and worst song are the SAME song. Because depending on my feelings on the day, it’s either a highly inventive and fascinating example of a prog sidelong or an accidental recording of the band messing around in the studio on their break.

So, when I’m analysing it, I can see its many, many strengths and that’s why I’m giving it a really good grade. But I can’t justify giving it the 6 or 7 that I often want to, because of the very real possibility that tomorrow I might listen to it and end up throwing it across the room in despair. If Robert Fripp actually tried to make an album that has this effect, then he’s even more of a terrible genius than I previously thought.

King Crimson: In the Wake of Poseidon

 In the Wake of Poseidon

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.

King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King

In the Court of the Crimson King

Best song: The Court of the Crimson King

Worst song: Moonchild

Overall grade: 7

Greg Lake’s voice blows me away. Even on 21^st Century Schizoid Man, where it’s so distorted you can barely make out what he’s saying, it’s just… wow. King Crimson were mighty inconsistent but they had a handful of outstanding albums with little to elevate one above another, so I’m not ashamed to say that it’s Greg Lake’s presence that pushes this one to the top of the pile for me. I reckon he just edges out Peter Gabriel for my favourite vocalist ever, and his best work can be found right here.

I could just write 500 words on the power and intensity and the hundreds of different emotions of Lake’s voice, but I want people to actually read this, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll talk about the other things that make it awesome! The album, that is, not his voice. There are just five songs, four of them are close to flawless, and put together they would make something that’s incredibly worthy of the title ‘first ever progressive rock album’, whether it’s completely true or not.

We kick things off with ‘21^st Century Schizoid Man’, which is still different to anything else I’ve ever heard, so I can only imagine what it was like in 1969. Then there’s ‘I Talk To The Wind’. King Crimson are generally thought of as being one of the heavier, more avant-garde of prog bands, but this song proves that they could do the other side of things just as well. It’s so light and floaty, led by Ian McDonald’s flute and light on the drums.

Closing off Side One is ‘Epitaph’, and listening to this makes it easy to see why the genre immediately got its reputation of being bombastic and pretentious – two traits which many people see as automatically negative, as when they’re done well (like here!) they can work. Although Lake’s voice is so far down in the mix here that I’m often straining to hear it and miss other details of the song.

‘Moonchild’ is the only one here that I don’t consider one of the four classics. The first two and a half minutes are another ‘I Talk To The Wind’-style ballad, only nowhere near as awesome, but it’s the following ten minutes that I’m going to complain about. That being said, though, I don’t have the strong reaction to it that most people do. I’ve heard it called unlistenable, but it doesn’t repulse me, more, it disappoints me. Up to this point every note of every song has felt like it was planned out and agonised over so that it would be exactly right, but here, it’s so aimless. It’s not even a proper instrumental jam – it’s more like everyone said ‘I think I’m just going to play three random notes, trail off and wait for someone else to do the same kind of thing…’ Why? Why, when you have a group of such obviously talented songwriters, would you waste ten minutes on that?

But it’s OK! We finish off with ‘The Court of the Crimson King’ and this, maybe this was the whole point. Robert Fripp and co. made us sit through all of ‘Moonchild’ just so that this epic would seem even better by comparison! Let me tell you, that moment around the 8 minute mark just after ‘The Dance of the Puppets’ when the whole band comes crashing back in – that makes it worth it, every single time. The whole song is stunning, powerful, and keeps me on the edge of my seat for the whole 9 minutes. Prog would get better than this, but not much.

(Fun game: listen to any other prog band and try to guess which of these five songs they were most inspired by.)