Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes

Released - June 1968

Genre - Psychedelic

Producer - Manoel Barenbein

Selected Personnel - Arnaldo Baptista (Vocals/Keyboards/Bass); Rita Lee (Vocals/Recorder/Autoharp/Percussion); Sergio Dias (Vocals/Guitar); Jorge Ben (Vocals/Guitar); Clarisse Leite (Piano); Gilberto Gil (Percussion)

Standout Track - Bat Macumba

This album has been one I've known for a long time before finally relenting very recently and persuading myself that I was going to put it on this list after all. Don't get me wrong - there are some moments on Os Mutantes that are truly, truly great. There's also a lot of fairly duff filler (including most of the album's second half), so I've always struggled to really convince myself that I can honestly put my hand on my heart and hold it up as a "great" album. I've listened to it again a few times recently and come to the conclusion that the good stuff is just so plain nuts and stupid that I can't help but love the whole thing. Of all the out-there psychedelic weirdness committed to record in the late 60s, Os Mutantes have to be up there as one of the weirdest groups of the lot, and I love them for it. Their self-titled debut is a kaleidoscopic parade of nonsense and ridiculous fun, and it's astonishing I allowed myself to be grumpily cynical about it for so long.

Os Mutantes were originally formed in 1966 by brothers Arnaldo and Sergio Dias Baptista, who played bass, keyboards, guitar and vocals between them. They were joined by lead vocalist Rita Lee, and began making a name for themselves in Sao Paulo and Brazil in general before falling in with the Tropicalia movement. I've not heard any recordings of the band's early stuff before meeting the likes of Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, so have no idea how radically their sound was transformed if at all, but Gil and Veloso were certainly instrumental in helping the band achieve wider significance. They were two of the leading figures involved in the Tropicalia artistic movement, which in music manifested itself as the merging of traditional Brazilian and African musical styles and rhythms with American and English psychedelic rock and roll. Os Mutantes soon became equally significant figures within the Tropicalia movement, contributing to the scene's "manifesto" album Tropicalia - Panis Et Circenses in 1968 and also recording their own debut album, which featured a number of Gil and Veloso's compositions alongside their own.

From the off, the colourful and nonsensical tone is made very clear. The cartoonish horn fanfare that kicks of Gil and Veloso's "Panis Et Circenses" is silly enough, then after a minute or so of its fairground melody, the entire record winds to a stop as if removed from the turntable before starting up again, no doubt a mischievous prank to try and trick listeners into thinking they'd bought a faulty copy. Then there's the buzzing, almost discordant distorted guitar of "A Minha Menina" that drones alongside its otherwise chirpy acoustic guitar riff to make it sound ever more cartoonish. The catchy and insistent rhythms of "Adeus, Maria Fulo" are augmented by the squeaking of a cueca that's so fun it even keeps the joy of the song alive when the melody becomes slightly turgid. "Baby" is an irresistibly catchy slice of 60s pop with undoubtedly the most infectious chorus of the record, and "Senhor F" is another great fairground-sounding pop song whose finest moment is perhaps its steam-train whistle at the beginning if not its jubilant horn break in the middle, and "Bat Macumba" is the finest moment of the record, a party tune whose gleefully shouted chorus, tribal percussion and jittery, insect-like guitar making it an irresistibly brilliant song. Up until this point the only major misstep has been the tepid ballad "O Relogio," but sadly from "Bat Macumba" onwards there's not really anything that captures my attention much or sticks in my mind, while things like the cover of Francoise Hardy's "Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour" are positively wearisome.

The whole thing is swathed in layers of reverb and distortion, either as a deliberate effect or due to slightly dodgy recording equipment (or perhaps a combination of both) so that the overall effect is that of listening to a transmission from a distant, forgotten cartoon world where everything is somehow intangible and somehow infinitely more fun than everything solid and real and permanent that we have here. It would become one of the most lasting and popular albums of the band's career, while Os Mutantes themselves would become revered as one of the very greatest rock bands in Brazil's history, although the band's original lineup would gradually fragment during the 70s due to drug issues and personal resentments. Gil and Veloso, meanwhile, were arrested and exiled by Brazil's totalitarian military government in 1969 for opposing the 1964 coup d'etat that had put the government in place, limiting their possible involvement with Os Mutantes for the next few years. While I love this colourful little time capsule of a record, it's never compelled me to urgently seek out more of Os Mutantes' discography, but there are a few moments of such greatness here that it might be something I look into one day.

Track Listing:

1. Panis Et Circenses (Gilberto Gil & Caetano Veloso)

2. A Minha Menina (Jorge Ben)

3. O Relogio (Arnaldo Baptista; Rita Lee & Sergio Dias)

4. Adeus, Maria Fulo (Sivuca & Humberto Teixeira)

5. Baby (Caetano Veloso)

6. Senhor F (Arnaldo Baptista; Rita Lee & Sergio Dias)

7. Bat Macumba (Gilberto Gil & Caetano Veloso)

8. Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour (Franck Gerald & Jean Renard)

9. Trem Fantasma (Caetano Veloso; Arnaldo Baptista; Rita Lee & Sergio Dias)

10. Tempo No Tempo (John Phillips, arranged by Arnaldo Baptista; Rita Lee & Sergio Dias)

11. Ave Genghis Khan (Arnaldo Baptista; Rita Lee & Sergio Dias)

Brian Eno - Another Green World

Released - September 1975

Genre - Art Rock

Producer - Brian Eno & Rhett Davies

Selected Personnel - Brian Eno (Vocals/Synthesiser/Guitar/Bass/Piano/Percussion/Sound Effects/Organ); John Cale (Viola); Phil Collins (Drums/Percussion); Robert Fripp (Guitar); Percy Jones (Bass); Roderick Melvin (Piano); Paul Rudolph (Bass/Guitar); Brian Turrington (Bass/Piano)

Standout Track - The Big Ship

Another Green World is markedly different to all of Brian Eno's other "conventional" art rock albums (meaning his records consisting of slightly more convetional song structures rather than consisting principally of ambient compositions - it'd be difficult to describe any Eno album as being truly "conventional") in that it manages to merge both his approaches to making music but never quite strikes a comfortable balance between the two - it's an album it took me a long time to love due to the fact that there doesn't feel like there's a satisfying symbiosis between the lyrical songs and the more imagistic pieces, and as such very much feels like a mixed bag of disparate ideas, some of which work and some of which don't. But for the transitional phase Eno was going through, gradually losing interest in traditional rock music and becoming more fascinated with ambient sonic textures thanks to his experimenting on records like (No Pussyfooting) and Discreet Music, it's perhaps a perfect snapshot of his mind at the time, busily painting with sound and with ideas to try and express something, and sometimes falling short but never failing to be a valiant experiment.

As I said in my review of Discreet Music, to my knowledge, although that record was released after Another Green World, by the time he came to start working on this album he had already been experimenting extensively within the territory of what he would eventually codify as ambient music, and this shift in his musical sensibilities I think has a huge importance in appreciating this record. Rather than going into a recording studio with a collection of songs to work on, this time Eno went in with nothing other than a selection of guest musicians (including his previous collaborator Robert Fripp, Velvet Underground violist John Cale and Genesis drummer Phil Collins, plus new producer Rhett Davies who would go on to be a frequent collaborator with both Eno and his former Roxy Music cohort Bryan Ferry) with the intention of creating new material from scratch in the studio. Even those guest musicians were to be kept in limited roles, with Eno playing the vast majority of the instruments on the album. This time Eno's aim wasn't to create a collection of actual songs, and only five of the fourteen compositions that would make up the album would actually involve vocal melodies. Rather, his aim was just to experiment with textures, soundscapes and atmospheres to create brief snapshots and images through music to convey a particular idea.

It's a long way from the truly ambient material of his work in the later 70s, given that most of the instrumental pieces on Another Green World are still driven by some form of melody or rhythm, however slight, but this album is one of the finest at conveying just how perfectly Eno could communicate a mood or an emotion through a particular treatment of a certain sound. While they had been used sporadically on his previous solo album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), this was the first album that would be composed almost entirely via the use of Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards he devised with artist Peter Schmidt (who provided the album's cover art, detail from his painting After Raphael). It would become key to Eno's working methods, and would come to be adopted by artists he collaborated with such as David Bowie, and consisted of a deck of cards each posing a "worthwhile dilemma," a way of forcing a creative mind into a lateral position in order to find unexpected ways of resolving a creative issue. Instructions such as "Honour thy mistake as a hidden intention" or "Discover your formulas and then abandon them" forced Eno into the kind of weird, unexpected sonic territories he forges into here. In fact, the lyrical songs are among the weakest cuts on the album.

"Sky Saw" is the best of the conventional songs, though its vocal melody is one of the less impressive parts of it, second to the scraping of Cale's viola and the emotive droning of Eno's "snake guitar," a guitar with particular distortions and treatments applied to it which created a sound that Eno claimed only Mike Oldfield also knew how to create. It's a wonderful slice of dark, atmospheric rock, but some of the other melodic pieces like "St. Elmo's Fire" are pretty uninspiring (Fripp's blistering guitar solo aside), while "I'll Come Running" is one of the blandest and most tedious songs Eno ever recorded.

But in its atmospheric instrumental pieces the album really comes alive. "In Dark Trees," with its clattering, metallic percussion and wheezing synths, is gloriously creepy, and "The Big Ship," on which Eno plays all instruments himself, is an incredibly cathartic and inspiring piece, one where the growing intensity and grandeur of the swathes of synth make the whole piece slowly ascend skywards to one of Eno's most affecting climaxes. "The Big Ship" just about takes the place of this album's finest track, but there's a double whammy of incredibly powerful ambient pieces in the second half that almost match it in the form of "Becalmed" followed by "Zawinul/Lava." Far more placid and glacial than "The Big Ship," they always feel like a conjoined pair to me in that they both explore the empty space between the oases created by chiming chords played on synth or keyboards, but while one manages to extend and explore that space in a way that feels calming and transcendental ("Zawinul/Lava"), the other ("Becalmed") explores the same musical territory in what always feels to me like a tone of despair and isolation. It's one of Eno's greatest masterclasses in how he can take similar musical ingredients and treat them in different ways to create an entirely different tone and mood.

Much of the rest of the album varies from the decent to the wholly forgettable, and I'd have trouble whole-heartedly recommending Another Green World as an album that's 100% killer. But for precisely that reason it fulfils Eno's ambitions for it as a record totally - it finds precise, imagistic ways of expressing the spaces within his mind that he wanted to explore, and that means moving through a variety of textures and timbres regardless of how musically compelling they may be. Sadly, it essentially marked the end of Eno as a commercial artist and failed to chart well compared to his previous solo albums. But this was largely due to his own decision to move in that direction, to explore the sonic and emotional qualities of music itself rather than worry about writing songs that would sell well. It's come to be regarded as a classic album and a hugely significant one for music as a whole, and it also marks the shift after which Eno would cease to think of himself as a "solo artist" in any traditional sense. He would release one more conventional-ish solo album in 1977, Before And After Science, but the next few years would largely see him working either as a collaborator for other more mainstream artists, or experimenting in sonic compositions. Many of Eno's greatest innovations and achievements were still to come, though.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Brian Eno.

1. Sky Saw

2. Over Fire Island

3. St. Elmo's Fire

4. In Dark Trees

5. The Big Ship

6. I'll Come Running

7. Another Green World

8. Sombre Reptiles

9. Little Fishes

10. Golden Hours

11. Becalmed

12. Zawinul/Lava

13. Everything Merges With The Night

14. Spirits Drifting

Brian Eno - Discreet Music

Released - November 1975

Genre - Ambient

Producer - Brian Eno

Selected Personnel - Brian Eno (Synthesiser/Keyboards); Gavin Bryars (Arranger/Conductor)

Standout Track - Discreet Music

Discreet Music is actually the second of the two solo records Brian Eno released in 1975, and the first, the ever-so-slightly more accessible and conventionally song-based Another Green World, is one I'll talk about here too. However, I seem to remember reading in Eno's biography that Discreet Music was actually conceived and recorded prior to Another Green World, and I feel it represents a shift in Eno's approach to music that can be traced through his subsequent recordings from Another Green World onwards, so I'm going to write about it first. Discreet Music is essentially Eno's first full-blown foray into what would come to be called ambient music, a term he would coin himself in 1978 when he first attempted to categorise and codify his new approaches to music starting with Ambient 1: Music For Airports. But, for all intents and purposes, the title track of this record is the first time a piece of music that recognisably fulfilled the aims and ideas of ambient was heard. Eno's earlier experimental collaboration with Robert Fripp, 1973's (No Pussyfooting), had been a step towards the idea of formless music devoid of melody or rhythm, but didn't yet have the textural and atmospheric qualities that would become key to Eno's summation of ambient music.

The appearance of Discreet Music in 1975 is the result of two distinct stories. Firstly, Eno, always an artist first and a musician second, had fallen in with the Portsmouth Sinfonia in 1972, an art-house orchestra consisting exclusively of non-musicians or of musicians playing instruments they were unfamiliar with. Its discordant, horribly screeching string section can be heard gracing sections of Eno's second solo album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Some of the other figures involved with the Portsmouth Sinfonia included avant-garde composers such as Gavin Bryars, Simon Jeffes (later to form the Penguin Cafe Orchestra) and Michael Nyman. These artists kept Eno in touch with a more pioneering, artistic approach to composing and conceiving of music than Eno was allowed to encounter much in the world of art rock that his Roxy Music days had kept him tethered to, and he soon set about establishing a record label to showcase the talents of these figures that he found so inspiring. Through him they would be able to reach a far wider audience than they could ever hope to on their own, and through them he would be able to experiment with avant-garde ideas about composition that he wouldn't be able to get away with on a more mainstream rock album. So it was that Obscure Records was launched in 1975 with Gavin Bryars' magisterial The Sinking Of The Titanic. Discreet Music would be the third record released on Obscure, and would represent the evolution of a new idea Eno had had about music due to a nearly fatal accident.

Up until 1975, Eno had been very interested in treating sound and in unusual approaches to making music, but this had often been tied to conventional song structures. Even in the more unusual case of (No Pussyfooting), he was still ultimately applying his treatments to what was basically just a lengthy guitar solo. In 1975, Eno was nearly knocked down by a car and cracked his head open, prompting a lengthy convalesence. After being bought a record of 18th century harp music, he found himself lying in bed too weak to get up to adjust the volume, but the music playing so quietly it was almost inaudible. As such, he suddenly became aware of a whole new quality within music, of its ability to become part of an atmosphere around it, to blend in with and affect the tone of a space rather than to be a construct to be focused on in its own right. In some ways it was an extension of Erik Satie's "furniture music" in the early 1900s, music that was intended deliberately as unobtrusive background music. But Eno's ambitions were far more atmospheric and textural - he wanted to be able to treat sound in a way that made the music as easy to ignore as it was to listen to. So it is that we end up with the title track of Discreet Music, easily one of the most majestic and glorious ambient pieces of Eno's career.

Whereas Eno's later ambient pieces would frequently be founded on randomness and impulse, on the idea of clusters of notes or particular textures emerging on a whim, "Discreet Music" is very much built on a concrete set of rules, to the extent that the original album included a diagram to illustrate how the composition was created. The piece relies heavily on the system of tape-loops Eno had developed with Fripp that would later be dubbed "Frippertronics," involving a recording of a sound to be played back into itself and looped so that the original sound can be treated and distorted while also being played back at the same time. Or something. The details escape me. Basically, "Discreet Music" involves two separate, very simple, melodic phrases played on synthesisers that are then looped for half an hour, gradually phasing in and out of sync with each other while Eno occasionally applies treatments and effects to the sound. It's one of his very finest ambient pieces due to its absolute simplicity - it achieves the goal of ambient music with total perfection, being something that can be totally ignored and become an almost imperceptible tonal quality of an empty space just as easily as it can be obsessed over and listened to in minute detail, with every tonal shift taking on a great weight of meaning. It's also magnificently beautiful, able to create a mood of total surrender and bliss with, essentially, zero effort. The piece actually originated as a piece for Fripp to add guitar parts to, but stands magnificently well on its own merit. Fripp and Eno's second collaborative album, 1975's Evening Star, features a much shorter version of the piece entitled "Wind On Wind," but they still wisely let it speak for itself without the need for Fripp to embellish it.

The album's second half consists of a wholly different musical experiment that stands separate from Eno's ambient works. It's arguably as successful an experiment, albeit one that's slightly less pleasant to listen to. Eno's experiments in avant-garde composition were largely restricted to ambient music, given his lack of formal training in composition, but the second half of Discreet Music sees him wrestling with a weightier and more technically complex idea, one that required the assistance of Gavin Bryars to realise. Essentially taking its cue from the cut-up literary technique popularised by William S. Burroughs in the 60s, the idea was to take an existing piece of music - in this case, Johann Pachelbel's famous "Canon In D" - and to see how the tone and sound of the piece was affected by rearranging its time signatures and structures. With assistance from Bryars, who had the formal classical training to transform such an ambitious idea into a reality, Eno prepared three separate arrangements of the Canon that involved only very short fragments of the piece being given to each performer in the orchestra, with instructions for those fragments to be repeated and for time signatures and rhythms to be slowly sped up and slowed down at the performer's discretion. As such, the album's second half is far less an actual piece of music and far more the realisation of an artistic idea, with Eno as the originator of the idea and Bryars and the orchestra as the actual mouthpieces giving that idea a voice, but such avant-garde premises were the entire goal of the Obscure label.

Those three pieces (each one named after an inaccurate French-to-English translation of the liner notes of a particular recording of Pachelbel's Canon) are fascinating if never 100% perfect. There's a really wonderful sense of dislocation and despair in the first arrangement, "Fullness Of Wind," which starts with an almost-recognisable performance of the Canon that soon slows and drawls into an apocalyptic drone over which occasional violins desperately try to play some semblance of a melody before slowing and dying again. It's a truly terrifying sound, and that something so frightening and empty-sounding was derived from something as pleasant as the Canon in D is all the more fascinating. If "Fullness Of Wind" had been the only arrangement then I might consider the whole experiment a total success, but by the end of the third I feel like the limits of what can be achieved with that idea have been worn out and it's become simply a rather discordant loop. But it achieves full marks for its ambition and the uniqueness of its conception.

Discreet Music went largely unnoticed on its release - while the Obscure label granted composers like Bryars access to a much wider audience, their release was still quite limited and didn't get the same kind of exposure as Eno's mainstream solo releases. In 1975, this kind of music was also hugely unappealing to the major music-buying public and it wasn't until Eno began to categorise and mass-market his ideas about ambient composition in 1978 that a wider public really began to pay attention to it, at which point Discreet Music became reappraised and is now rightly recognised as one of his finest musical achievements. The title track itself might well be my very favourite Eno ambient piece alongside Thursday Afternoon, and the second side easily demonstrates that, while he may have lacked the technical skill of some of his fellow composers in the Portsmouth Sinfonia, he still had incredibly ambitious and complex artistic ideas about the structure and arrangement and composition of music that ranked him as their ideological equal. Personally, I always feel like Discreet Music, if it was indeed recorded prior to Another Green World, is a major transitional point in Eno's discography as it marks the point at which he became more interested in the texture and atmosphere of music than in the idea of writing songs. Whereas Here Come The Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) had been entirely song-based, after Discreet Music he seemed to feel freer to indulge himself in textural, instrumental experiments, small snatches of a mood or an idea rather than complete song-structures, and that shift becomes more evident with 1975's more prominent solo release, Another Green World.

Track Listing:

1. Discreet Music (Brian Eno)

2. Fullness Of Wind (Johann Pachelbel, arranged by Brian Eno & Gavin Bryars)

3. French Catalogues (Johann Pachelbel, arranged by Brian Eno & Gavin Bryars)

4. Brutal Ardour (Johann Pachelbel, arranged by Brian Eno & Gavin Bryars)

Bad Company - Straight Shooter

Released - April 1975

Genre - Hard Rock

Producer - Bad Company

Selected Personnel - Paul Rodgers (Vocals/Guitar/Piano); Mick Ralphs (Guitar/Keyboards); Simon Kirke (Drums); Boz Burrell (Bass)

Standout Track - Deal With The Preacher

Onwards into 1975, then, a year which would see the first stirrings of a total sea change for rock music. As has been strongly established on this blog, many of my tastes and preferences in music have at some point been dictated by my love of prog rock, so the fluctuating attitudes to the genre will every now and again form a kind of narrative backbone to things. 1974 was basically the last year in which prog could be considered to be genuinely popular. By 1975, people were sick of its complexity and its pomposity and its self-indulgence and many of the big bands were already sundered or on uncertain ground. Pink Floyd are probably the only major prog band who managed to survive past 1975 without making some kind of major change to their lineup or style or approach. The growing frustration with prog manifested itself in a few ways in 1975. The most notable was the arrival of punk, which can be talked about more another time (it's a horrible genre, but one that gave way to a lot of really interesting and great stuff). Another I seem to notice looking at 1975 is the new prominence of unabashed, stadium rock. Before long I'll talk about Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run, an album that would make him into a phenomenon, and here we have the chance to talk about Bad Company, one of the very finest unapologetic, cheesy, unimaginative stadium rock bands of all time.

Bad Company had risen from the ashes of Free, Mott The Hoople and King Crimson in 1974 with their wonderful self-titled debut album, which was very much in the more earthy, simple mould of Free rather than the glamourous trappings of Mott or the menacing prog of Crimson. But even the rawer, bluesier elements of Free's sound had been compressed together and packaged into a punchier, leaner, tidier format consisting of simply great, immediately memorable songwriting and gutsy, simple guitar riffs from Mick Ralphs while Paul Rodgers belted out unforgettable tunes in one of the finest voices in rock. Stadium rock is a genre so over-the-top and caught up in its own machismo and showbiz aspirations that it would be very easy to be cynical about if it weren't so damn enjoyable as it is when Bad Company do it.

Wisely deciding that they didn't need to fix something that wasn't broken, Bad Company's second album closely follows the format of their debut, prioritising simple, catchy rock tunes and crunchy riffs over any showboating, grandeur or intricacy. This was music to rock out to, pure and simple. Album opener "Good Lovin' Gone Bad" sets the stall out almost as well as "Can't Get Enough" did at the start of Bad Company the previous year - it's an immense riff, and Rodgers belts out his vocals in as committed a roar as ever. "Feel Like Makin' Love," one of the album's big hits, is something of a rugpull in that it starts out as a fairly low-key acoustic ballad that soon kicks into one of the coolest hard rock choruses the band ever churned out, climaxing in an incendiary guitar solo from Ralphs. It's a song so effortlessly cool that it became a de facto theme tune for myself and a couple of other rock fan friends at uni, who used to just repeatedly sing the chorus endlessly when we ran short of things to talk about.

"Weep No More" is the first composition on the album by drummer Simon Kirke (Rodgers' fellow Free alumnus) and is one of the album's less convincing moments (sadly alongside Kirke's other contribution, "Anna," - Kirke is a solidly reliable drummer, but isn't a stellar songwriter). "Weep No More" isn't a bad song by any means, but it does little to blow you away while waiting for the next real air-puncher. That comes in the form of "Shooting Star," a song whose reputation irks me somewhat despite its brilliance. It's easily one of Bad Company's best-known songs, but that legacy means it often overshadows other songs on Straight Shooter that are immeasurably better, like "Good Lovin' Gone Bad," "Feel Like Makin' Love," and most notably, "Deal With The Preacher." "Shooting Star" is another acoustic ballad that boasts one of the most iconic sing-along choruses of the band's career. Apparently a tribute to the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, all of whom died due to problems with drugs or alcohol, it's a fist-pumping tribute to rock'n'roll stardom, although Rodgers' claims that it's about such a specific series of deaths does make you wonder why there doesn't seem to be more regret or lamentation in a song that's basically an unapologetic celebration of rock'n'roll excess and hedonism. Maybe Paul Rodgers is actually being very subversive, though subtlety and irony never seem to be his major priorities.

After that it's the song that's possibly my favourite in Bad Company's entire discography. "Deal With The Preacher" is a song it's easy to forget about as it wasn't a big hit like "Can't Get Enough," "Bad Company," "Feel Like Makin' Love" or "Shooting Star," but its breakneck rhythm and fearsome guitar riff, paired with perhaps Rodgers' most playful and enjoyable vocal performance ever (the stuttering "make a deal, make a deal, make a deal" moment is always an absolute joy) make it perhaps the perfect combination of classic ingredients for a truly wonderful Bad Company song. It closely pips "Feel Like Makin' Love" for the position of best song on the album, and while it'll always be a close call, it certainly rivals even the finest material on Bad Company as one of their very best songs.

"Wild Fire Woman" is another great hard rock song, and then the album slumps a little towards the end with a couple of weaker songs in "Anna" and "Call On Me." Bad Company as an album has a greater consistency than this followup, in that it didn't lose steam towards its end like Straight Shooter. But for the vast majority of its running time Straight Shooter is firing on all cylinders and really showing how effortlessly Bad Company could make epic rock music. Like the previous album it was a huge success, driven by the success of "Shooting Star" as a single. Off the back of its success, Bad Company were one of the biggest stadium rock acts in the world, but ask most people who are familiar with Bad Company and it's unlikely they've heard much beyond these first two albums. Quite why the band's fortunes faded so quickly is uncertain - personally, I'm a huge fan of their third album Run With The Pack, but it rarely ranks very highly in fans' estimations, and after that things quickly fell apart over a series of albums where the band seemed to totally lose track of how they were able to make great music not that long ago. All that's still to come, though - for now, the band had released the album that would forever stand alongside their first as the only two Bad Company albums most people would ever listen to. And, it must be said, that those two albums make for a pretty astounding legacy, even if nothing ever quite measured up to them.

Track Listing:

1. Good Lovin' Gone Bad (Mick Ralphs)

2. Feel Like Makin' Love (Paul Rodgers & Mick Ralphs)

3. Weep No More (Simon Kirke)

4. Shooting Star (Paul Rodgers)

5. Deal With The Preacher (Paul Rodgers & Mick Ralphs)

6. Wild Fire Woman (Paul Rodgers & Mick Ralphs)

7. Anna (Simon Kirke)

8. Call On Me (Paul Rodgers)

War - The World Is A Ghetto

Released - November 1972

Genre - Funk

Producer - Jerry Goldstein, Lonnie Jordan & Howard Scott

Selected Personnel - Howard Scott (Guitar/Percussion/Vocals); B.B. Dickerson (Bass/Percussion/Vocals); Lonnie Jordan (Organ/Piano/Percussion/Vocals); Harold Brown (Drums/Percussion/Vocals); Papa Dee Allen (Percussion/Vocals); Charles Miller (Saxophone/Woodwinds/Percussion/Vocals); Lee Oskar (Harmonica/Percussion/Vocals)

Standout Track - The World Is A Ghetto

Another step back in time to make a retroactive addition to my list as we hop back to 1972 for another album I've found through my ever-deepening love of funk and soul music. In all honesty, I kind of overdid it a bit in my plunging into the genre earlier this year, but it helped me to discover a number of truly great records. But after listening to classic records by the likes of Funkadelic, Parliament, Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, Sly And The Family Stone and Stevie Wonder (you'll notice none of those early Stevie Wonder albums made my list - apologies to fans, he's just not convincing as an album artist, I think), I felt like I'd reached saturation point for a while and needed to take a break. I spent the next few months tentatively dipping my toes into post-punk (which is better than I'd ever expected to find it), telling myself that I'd continue my forays into funk and soul music the next time I found some that really took me by surprise.

That opportunity came a couple of weeks ago at a comedy gig in Kentish Town. During the interval, the pub's resident DJ put on a piece of music that grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, a slow, oppressive, atmospheric funk jam where a saxophone screamed over a slow bass groove. On asking to know what it was, I was told that it was the title track to The World Is A Ghetto, generally accepted as the finest album by the band War. I'd been aware of War for some time, of course, though for whatever reason I'd never got round to listening to any more than their biggest hit, "Low Rider" (which I initially only became familiar with because they used it in those Marmite ads in the 90s). It's odd, considering how much I love "Low Rider," that I didn't target War more when I first started developing an interest in the genre earlier this year, but finally I've found them. So far I've only heard The World Is A Ghetto, but based on all it gets right I'm keen to hear more.

Like Sly And The Family Stone, War were a racially diverse group, consisting of members from both black and Latino communities. In the generally quite cut-and-dried racial geography of the music scene at the time, bands like War that were able to fuse such diverse musical influences stood out above many other funk bands of the time. War began in the late 60s under the stewardship of producer Jerry Goldstein as the new backing band for former Animals frontman Eric Burdon. After Burdon quit the band in 1970, War forged on with Goldstein and morphed into a new kind of outfit. Like Funkadelic, who around the same time were beginning to establish themselves as a band focused on instrumental jams rather than being defined by one lead vocalist (as in the case of Sly Stone), War became a collective of sorts which would largely focus on instrumental music, with relatively simple lyrics aiming to speak out about equality, brotherhood and community against racism and prejudice.

This new version of War had already released two albums by the time of The World Is A Ghetto, and I've yet to see what those albums are like, but the general consensus seems to be that this was where they really found their voice and produced their most compelling and consistent work. The mood of oppressive menace and despair that hung so heavily when I first heard the title track is actually largely absent on what is mostly a hugely feelgood album, one that ably fulfils their aim of espousing optimistic messages of hope and brotherhood. "The Cisco Kid" is a feelgood Latin-flavoured shuffle to it, and a catchy vocal chorus, and also exhibits War's famed method of having Lee Oskar's harmonica and Charles Miller's saxophone playing prominent melodic lines in unison in order to sound like a totally new instrument. It's a technique best exhibited by the melody of "Low Rider," but the same effect is clear on "The Cisco Kid," which was the album's hit single.

For me, "Where Was You At" is a fairly by-the-numbers and forgettable funk song, but the album's first side closes in fine style with the epic jam of "City, Country, City," an instrumental that starts with a pretty and stately guitar figure before veering rapidly into high speed, frenetic organ solos from Lonnie Jordan that don't drop the pace once until the closing minute or so, where Howard Scott's languid guitar solo twines itself around the now measured pace of Jordan's organ. The mood of the album's second side is more downbeat, in keeping with the album's pessimistic title. "Four Cornered Room" is by no means the best musical moment on the album, but is a hugely atmospheric piece of music. It's anchored by the slow, death-knell bass of B.B. Dickerson, over which the harmonica wails and cries and the full band shriek a funereal chorus that more or less just echoes the same phrase over and over again - "As I sit in my four-cornered room." For a band whose biggest hit is something as upbeat as "Low Rider," "Four Cornered Room" is a truly bleak piece of music.

As I said, the tone of the following title track is similar, but ultimately perhaps more hopeful. It certainly has more musical momentum to it, and is less dirge-like in its pace. The distorted, aquatic-sounding guitar riff that kicks things off establishes a hazy, smog-like vibe before the horns truly kick things into gear and a steady, measured groove is established. The vocal parts have some gorgeous harmonies to them, and despite the bleak title the lyrics actually do espouse a kind of wide-eyed hope for finding comfort in others, rather than a cynical cry of anger at the world around them. It truly comes into its own as a piece of music about halfway through, when Miller truly lets loose shrieking and wailing on his sax and the jam builds and builds in fierce intensity to a truly cathartic conclusion.

It's easily up there with something like Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain" as one of the finest funk jams in terms of atmosphere and transformational mood, and the high-point of the album by a long way. It's followed by something of a damp squib in the closer "Beetles In The Bog," a song which echoes some of the tone of "The Cisco Kid" but doesn't pull it off half as convincingly. Despite that, this is an album that makes precious few mistakes, and the only two songs that do struggle to wholly convince me are its shortest, meaning the vast majority of this album consists of some awe-inspiring soundscapes that it's a pleasure to get lost in. Anybody who might have even remotely enjoyed any of the other classic albums by Funkadelic or Sly And The Family Stone that I've recommended here will find a lot to love here, and I'm certainly excited to listen to more of War's stuff to find out what other great material I've missed out on in all these years since I first saw that Marmite ad.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Papa Dee Allen, Harold Brown, B.B. Dickerson, Lonnie Jordan, Charles Miller, Lee Oskar & Howard Scott)

1. The Cisco Kid

2. Where Was You At

3. City, Country, City

4. Four Cornered Room

5. The World Is A Ghetto

6. Beetles In The Bog

Yes - Relayer

Released - November 1974

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Yes & Eddy Offord

Selected Personnel - Jon Anderson (Vocals); Steve Howe (Guitar/Vocals); Patrick Moraz (Keyboards); Chris Squire (Bass/Vocals); Alan White (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - The Gates Of Delirium

In 1972, Yes had released Close To The Edge, the record that would perhaps always be remembered as their best and that was perhaps the purest distillation of the ideas at the heart of the band's music (even if, for me, it will always sit somewhere slightly behind The Yes Album). After their indulging their own lofty ambitions with something as over-the-top as Close To The Edge had paid off so well, the logical next step seemed to be to indulge themselves even further. While Close To The Edge had featured one twenty-minute epic and two ten-minute pieces, 1973's Tales From Topographic Oceans would be a double album consisting of just four twenty-minute pieces. It is, with the notable exception of this year's execrable Heaven & Earth, one of the worst albums Yes ever recorded. There are a few decent musical ideas hidden across the record, but not one of the four songs has more than five minutes' worth of genuinely enjoyable material, while some are just flat out bad from start to finish. In the wake of the bloated album. While it wasn't universally hated on release, it continues to be a divisive album for Yes fans, and one person who came out strongly opposed to it was keyboardist Rick Wakeman, who quit the band soon after the album's release.

After auditioning a number of replacements (including Vangelis, who couldn't join Yes due to his aversion to touring, but would later work with lead vocalist Jon Anderson on a number of projects), Patrick Moraz was appointed the new keyboardist for the band, who set about working on a new album that wisely learned from the mistakes of their previous project. It takes a backwards step to replicate the structure of Close To The Edge with one epic piece followed by two shorter ten-minute songs. While it doesn't match the brilliance of that earlier album, the return to a slightly more concise and tight structure returns all the band's focus and attention to detail that felt lost in all the sprawling excess of Tales From Topographic Oceans. To deal first with the appointment of Moraz, he is effectively a place-filler here. At no point does he let the sound down, and he actually contributes a number of interesting ghostly, wailing soundscapes in the mid-section of "The Gates Of Delirium," but he lacks the skill to try and replicate the ornate solos and decorative frills of Wakeman, so the keyboards here feel far less noticeable or significant as a Yes fan might be used to, and it's notable that a lot of the music is driven more by Steve Howe's guitars than by Moraz's keyboards. That said, Moraz's space-age synth solo about thirteen minutes into "The Gates Of Delirium" is a moment he can be truly proud of, but his moments of jazzy invention on "Sound Chaser" come across as far more self-indulgent and directionless than Wakeman ever seemed.

"The Gates Of Delirium" itself is the album's centrepiece, a vast, sprawling battle epic that sees the lamblike bleating of Jon Anderson incongruously yelping out things like "Slay them, burn their children's laughter, on to hell!" The first few minutes of the piece, a fairly unremarkable vocal melody over the usual complicated, knotted arrangments of guitar and bass and clattering drums, rarely excite me much, but by the time the piece gets to its battle-oriented mid-section, with Chris Squire's bass pounding out a military rhythm and Howe's guitars becoming ever more distorted, able to sound like a piercing scream one minute and a death rattle the next, is a truly exciting bit of music and one of the most ambitious things Yes ever realised. That reaches its finale with Moraz's aforementioned synth part before everything quiets down into the beautiful final section, "Soon," a beautiful ballad about hope for the future where Anderson gets to play within his comfort zone a bit more and Howe's quiet, restrained guitar parts sound almost otherworldly.

There's a slightly awkward lurch from the beauty of that closing section into the album's second song, "Sound Chaser," one that has a couple of great moments but that I always struggle to consider a true classic. It's a highly experimental piece that takes its cue from the jazz fusion work of Miles Davis, Jon McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. It veers wildly between different time signatures and melodies, all the while the entire band rattling and clattering away as if its life depends on it. Every now and again it stumbles upon a compelling melody, but it very quickly abandons it and returns to its established format of guitar, bass and drums furiously chasing each other around while the keyboards tinkle away in the background. The album redeems itself, though, with its glorious final number, "To Be Over," essentially taking the "obligatory ballad" spot of "And You & I" on Close To The Edge. It effectively follows on from the contemplative, peaceful mood established in that closing section of "The Gates Of Delirium," albeit perhaps more optimistic and less desolate. It builds to a rousing conclusion that rounds off one of Yes's more angry, unpredictable records with a heavy dose of their more familiar placidity.

Relayer was well received but failed to replicate the success of some of their earlier albums. Already, the musical landscape was changing and the overblown pomp of prog was beginning to look unfashionable. 1974 was already the year that had seen most of the big prog bands undergo big changes in order to survive - Peter Gabriel had quit Genesis, King Crimson had disbanded, and Yes were about to take a three-year hiatus. Their solution to the threat of irrelevance, it seemed, was to disassociate themselves from the idea that they had to be releasing new material constantly, but could now be comfortable doing it only when they wanted. As such, Relayer would be the final word from Yes for a few years before Going For The One appeared in 1977. It might not be the most perfect of their early albums, but almost single-handedly repairs the damage done by the indulgence of Tales Of Topographic Oceans, and stands as a very fine full stop in this early chapter of their career.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Patrick Moraz, Chris Squire & Alan White.

1. The Gates Of Delirium

2. Sound Chaser

3. To Be Over

Wishbone Ash - There's The Rub

Released - November 1974

Genre - Hard Rock

Producer - Bill Szymczyk

Selected Personnel - Martin Turner (Bass/Vocals); Andy Powell (Guitar/Mandolin/Vocals); Laurie Wisefield (Guitar/Banjo/Vocals); Steve Upton (Drums/Percussion); Albhy Galuten (Organ/Synthesisers); Nelso Flaco Padron (Percussion)

Standout Track - F.U.B.B.

For most people, Wishbone Ash is a meaningless combination of words. For most casual fans of the band, the extent of their contribution to music's legacy probably starts and ends with Argus. Personally, I'd also include their self-titled debut as another wholly essential and brilliant album. There are probably some fans out there who think that everything they ever did is brilliant. But even I have troubled recommending much of their stuff beyond those two excellent albums. 1971's Pilgrimage, for instance, features the classic "Jailbait" and a lot of other fairly tedious stuff I find quite difficult to recommend. 1974's There's The Rub, in particular, is one I feel torn about including. It's not a solidly brilliant album by any means, and the band's best stuff is definitely behind them. However, in places it really does strike gold, including a couple of moments that are some of my favourite Wishbone Ash songs, so I feel it's worth including it as final hoorah for a band who were briefly at the forefront of great, innovative rock music.

In the wake of the definitive Argus, Wishbone Ash took a big risk in recording an album that sidelined their defining twin lead-guitar elements and was grounded more in folk music, also dismissing their longterm producer Derek Lawrence in the process. The result was Wishbone Four, an album that failed to make much of an impact. Soon after, founding member and co-lead guitarist Ted Turner quit the band, leaving a sizeable gap to be filled. There's The Rub saw the band returning to their familiar hard rock sound, with newcomer Laurie Wisefield filling in Turner's spot and taking on the dueling guitar duties alongside Andy Powell. Wisefield certainly acquits himself well on the album, and there's not really any point where Ted Turner's presence is sorely missed, or even that the sound of the band feels radically different to what came before. This could mean lot of things - either Wisefield's own guitar technique was a dead ringer for Turner's, or Powell was perhaps always the driving force of the band's guitar work anyway. That or, possibly, the band's dual guitar format was the defining element of their sound rather than any individual's technique. Whatever the reason, this very much feels like the definitive Wishbone Ash is still intact.

It's largely business as usual here - the songs aren't up to the standard of Argus, but the band gets away with a lot on sheer confidence and swagger. "Don't Come Back," for instance, is actually a fairly conventional and by-the-numbers rocker, but the energy and force of its blistering guitar riffs elevates it to classic status. In particular, the grandstanding riff that's introduced in the last minute or so is one of the band's greatest moments. Opener "Silver Shoes" is another mixed bag - its verse is a fairly plodding affair that doesn't do much for me, but it eventually develops into a more upbeat, sequence of interchanging guitar melodies that makes it an album highlight. One of the two outright classic songs here is "Persephone," a mournful elegy with searing guitar solos that recalls some of the more epic moments of Argus such as "Throw Down The Sword." It became the album's best-known song and a live favourite for years, and rightly so.

For me, though, "Persephone" isn't the album's true standout moment. That honour belongs to the ferocious "F.U.B.B," (Fucked Up Beyond Belief), a monster of an instrumental that has traces of Wishbone Ash's classic "Handy." Like "Handy," it starts with a slow, meancing bass part by Ted Turner and slowly layers the rest of the band around it as it builds in intensity to a ferocious, breakneck piece of music that stands tall as one of the most exciting and fearsome things the band ever did. The other two tracks, "Hometown" and "Lady Jay" are fairly forgettable things which, while not being outright bad, do very little to cement the album as a classic.

It's ultimately well worth giving There's The Rub the time to appreciate it properly, as in places it measures up against the very best of what Wishbone Ash achieved, but for those hoping for an epic on the same scale as Argus, it's bound to be a slight disappointment. It's the last of the band's albums I listened to as, while I enjoy it, it didn't excite me enough to plough on into even more neglected areas of the band's discography. It's quite possible that there are other forgotten gems out there that maybe one day I'll find time to pay attention to, and perhaps Wisefield also eventually finds time to develop his own style and approach that breathes some new life into the band's music, but for now, "F.U.B.B." is a fitting swansong to round off Wishbone Ash's classic string of albums.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Martin Turner; Andy Powell; Laurie Wisefield & Steve Upton.

1. Silver Shoes

2. Don't Come Back

3. Persephone

4. Hometown

5. Lady Jay

6. F.U.B.B.

Tom Waits - The Heart Of Saturday Night

Released - October 1974

Genre - Jazz

Producer - Bones Howe

Selected Personnel - Tom Waits (Vocals/Piano/Guitar); Jim Hughart (Double Bass); Pete Christlieb (Saxophone); Jim Gordon (Drums); Bob Alcivar (Arrangements)

Standout Track - (Lookin' For) The Heart Of Saturday Night

I've been doing some maths. By looking at how many albums are currently on my list of Best Albums Ever, if I keep up a strike rate of five reviews per month (a target I've not been solidly hitting recently due to Being Very Busy, but I reckon I can do it) then it'll take me ten years before I finish. That's assuming I don't listen to any other albums between now and 2024 that I add to the list. I'm also aware that not many people read this blog and this is very much a personal crusade I've set myself rather than something that legions of fans are dying to see completed, but it's an exercise I enjoy so I'm going to try and commit to five reviews per month from now on. That means that every time I manage to get above that average then it all closes down that ten-year-gap before I can talk about Future Islands. Also, to be honest, my consumption of new music has slowed slightly in recent months. I've got really into Neil Young and classic funk and soul this year, but my burning need to listen to a new album every week or so has died down and I'm now much happier listening to old music I love but haven't listened to in a while, so there's every chance that I might even reach a definitive end point for this blog one day. I'm still listening to the odd new thing, though, so it's more likely that I'll never be done.

Anyway, onwards with the current chronology. Tom Waits's second album was another of the very first of his albums I heard, and one it took me slightly longer to love than the instant classic debut Closing Time. There are a handful of songs that are immediately on the same level as the stellar material from the previous album, but a number of tracks that took longer to worm their way into their affections. Stylistically, it follows directly on from Closing Time, although it's slightly more reliant on the full band lineup - whereas that earlier record was very much founded on Waits on the piano or guitar with the odd contribution from other band members, there are songs here like "Semi Suite" that feel much more built around a full band jazz setup, with Jim Hughart's lazy, ponderous basslines and Pete Christlieb's saxophone parts just as incremental as Waits's own instrumental contributions. There's a sense that the band here gels far better than the musicians on Closing Time, none of whom are back here, while Hughart, Christlieb, arranger Bob Alcivar and, most notably, producer Bones Howe would go on to work with Waits regularly over subsequent years (Howe would become Waits's closest musical ally for the next decade, producing all of his 70s albums on the Asylum label before abruptly being dropped by Waits as he shifted into new musical territory in the 80s).

In terms of the evolution of Waits's musical ideology and persona, The Heart Of Saturday Night forms an interesting little pairing with Closing Time as perhaps the only two albums where Waits was making a concerted effort to be a fairly traditional singer-songwriter. From 1975's Nighthawks At The Diner onwards, his shambling, ragged, drunken enigma persona came before any attempt to be perceived as a genuine troubadour, so this is perhaps the last time we see Waits at his most open and genuine. That's not to say that the songs are about anything particularly soul-baring or vulnerable, simply that this is the last time he makes no effort to disguise the person behind the music, while everything from 1975 onwards would be part of a brilliantly executed plan to blur fiction and reality.

Even here one can sense a slight shift in focus in his songwriting. Whereas the songs on Closing Time had mostly been fairly introspective songs of loneliness and longing, The Heart Of Saturday Night sees him looking outwards, taking account of the world around him. As ever with Waits, it's difficult to know if the more introverted songs on Closing Time were genuine attempts at self-expression or just fanciful stories ("Martha," at the very least, is hidden in a haze of obfuscation via fiction, being the story of an old man calling his high school sweetheart), but however much of it is "real," you can feel Waits looking up from his piano and trying to make sense of the world around him rather than just singing about himself. This is most obvious in the beautiful title track, one of the prettiest ballads Waits ever wrote which, with its opening sounds of midtown traffic, explores the small, insignificant details of everyday life on a Saturday night - in this song, possibly, is the very heart of everything that makes so much of Waits's music special. Talking about the song, Waits claimed it was an exploration of the details of mundane American life that Jack Kerouac chronicled - a search for some kind of meaning or absolute truth in the simple details of the lives of ordinary people. This would all come into sharper focus in later years when coming through the fractured mirror of Waits's drunken barfly act, but here it's rendered simply and beautifully, and is perhaps the most perfect example of what Waits tried to explore through music as he ever made.

It's one of a number of beautiful songs here - "San Diego Serenade," with its lush string arrangements by Alcivar, is one of the most personal songs Waits ever wrote. Here, the sentiment isn't one he tries to disguise but he simply sings with a touching openness about how much he misses his hometown of San Diego now he's relocated to L.A, and coming to terms, just as Joni Mitchell did on "Big Yellow Taxi," that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. "Drunk On The Moon" is a more characteristically vague song that avoids such genuine sentimentality, but even with its fairly opaque meaning, is blessed with such a pretty melody that it still stands as one of the album's most beautiful moments. The ballads, though, are ultimately outnumbered by the cooler, jazzier, bluesy numbers, which were in short supply on the more stark Closing Time, which only really delivered on that front with "Ice Cream Man." Here, one can feel Waits really enjoying playing with a band he gels with, and from the cool, downtrodden swagger of "Fumblin' With The Blues" to the breezy swing of "New Coat Of Paint," which again sees Waits exploring the idea of a drunken night out and what it means, there are plenty of moments where his more upbeat, jazzy sensibilities really stand out. There's also the beginnings of Waits as poet with "Diamonds On My Windshield," which sees him narrating a spoken word stream-of-consciousness inner monologue over Hughart's walking bassline. Such spoken word pieces would become a staple of many of Waits's records to come, and his abilities as a storyteller are at the forefront. There's also a wonderful bleary-eyed tiredness to the spoken vocals of album closer "The Ghosts Of Saturday Night," which finds Waits wearily taking account of the empty cafe around him as all the drunks head home. It's a vividly realised portrait that brings the scene to life in front of the listener and proves how perfectly Waits can marry words to music to create a specific mood.

Overall, The Heart Of Saturday Night isn't one of Waits's most perfect records - it has some absolutely sublime moments in "New Coat Of Paint," "San Diego Serenade" and the perfection of "(Lookin' For) The Heart Of Saturday Night," but it also has some fairly forgettable moments like "Shiver Me Timbers" and "Depot, Depot." It also feels like quite a transitional album - there's none of the introverted heartbreak or sentiment of Closing Time, but the full strength of Waits as shambling raconteur and documenter of the seedy, desparate side of everyday American life had yet to fully crystallise. But as such it shows him in an interesting state of gathering together the elements of his songwriter that really work for him. It's also the last time Waits would be heard on record sounding relatively clear-throated, as his notorious rasp and growl would start to creep in on his next album. The Heart Of Saturday Night helped to develop Waits's cult following, but failed to be a big hit, and Asylum set about trying to work out how to sell on record just how unique a performer Waits was. Their solution was to record an album live in order to demonstrate his incredible skills as a storyteller and performer, which had perhaps been lost in a clinical studio environment. The result was possibly the first time that Tom Waits really achieved exactly what he wanted on an album.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Tom Waits.

1. New Coat Of Paint

2. San Diego Serenade

3. Semi Suite

4. Shiver Me Timbers

5. Diamonds On My Windshield

6. (Lookin' For) The Heart Of Saturday Night

7. Fumblin' With The Blues

8. Please Call Me, Baby

9. Depot, Depot

10. Drunk On The Moon

11. The Ghosts Of Saturday Night (After Hours At Napoleone's Pizza House)

Supertramp - Crime Of The Century

Released - September 1974

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Ken Scott & Supertramp

Selected Personnel - Rick Davies (Vocals/Keyboards/Harmonica); Roger Hodgson (Vocals/Guitar/Piano); John Helliwell (Saxophone/Clarinet/Vocals); Dougie Thomson (Bass); Bob Siebenberg (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Crime Of The Century

So, here it is - the album which, at age 16, I decided was the greatest album of all time. Admittedly, at that time of my life I knew comparatively very little about the broader scope of music history to what I know now, and the other major contenders for the position at the time were Elton John's Madman Across The Water, the Electric Light Orchestra's Out Of The Blue and Everything But The Girl's Amplified Heart (all of which still hover in or around my top ten). It says a lot about just how perfect I think Crime Of The Century is that, in the nine years since then, even with all the hundreds of hours of new music I've heard, and even trying very hard to be totally objective and base my decision on genuine musical merit rather than affectionate nostalgia, I've never once been tempted to change my mind (though, admittedly, these days I'm slightly more aware that trying to choose a "greatest album of all time" is inherently a rather limiting and redundant decision to make). Still, the fact remains - this has never budged from my number one spot.

I think what's made it such a lasting thing for me is how precisely it straddles the two sides of my obsession with music. Pretty much all music I love has ultimately either fallen into the broad categories of "atmospheric artistic statement" or "cool, catchy pop." Many fall down more heavily on one side than the other. Supertramp's first two albums probably went more for prog rock explorations than for radio-friendly pop hits, while their later albums became decidedly more commercial and glossy. On Crime Of The Century, they found a perfect synergy that has never been bettered by any other band. Every single song is an effortless earworm, with hooks and melodies and solos and dynamics that have etched themselves permanently in my mind. But the mood and tone of the album is decidedly experimental, finding time for stark, cinematic soundscapes and sonic invention that call to mind Pink Floyd's similarly dark and introverted The Dark Side Of The Moon.

It's enormously significant in the broader history of Supertramp not only because of the frankly incredible results it delivers, but also in the place it holds in their discography, being effectively the debut of the "classic" Supertramp. In their self-titled debut album and its followup Indelibly Stamped, the band had established themselves as promising peddlers of unusually catchy prog rock, but the critics and general public barely noticed. The albums sold poorly, and the band's Dutch investor, Stanley August Miesegaes (who, in a touching gesture, Crime Of The Century is dedicated to), decided to call it a day having not seen any return for his financial support. Without financial backing, the band quickly called it a day as well, leaving only the nucleus of the band, chief songwriters Roger Hodgson (also vocals, guitar and keyboards) and Rick Davies (also vocals, piano, keyboards and harmonica). Over the following few years a new lineup would slowly be found, including drummer Bob Siebenberg (credited as Bob C. Benberg on all their 70s album so as to avoid immigration issues), bassist Dougie Thomson and saxophonist John Helliwell. Helliwell was perhaps the most significant new addition - both Thomson and Siebenberg are hugely talented musicians who reliably put their stamp on Supertramp's music, but Helliwell's presence brought something totally new to the band. While saxophones, flutes and woodwinds had been present on their early albums, they had never been pushed to the fore, and Helliwell's great talent meant that his saxophone solos became a staple of Supertramp's music by the end of the 70s, and perhaps one of the things the band is best remembered for.

Prior to the release of Crime Of The Century, this new version of the band had released a single called "Land Ho" (with the B-side "Summer Romances,") which vanished without trace and didn't amaze anybody despite being a fun song. But with the release of their new album in 1974, an astonishingly confident and capable new band emerged that finally managed to capitalise on the promise of those early albums, courtesy of the success of singles "Dreamer" and "Bloody Well Right." One other major change for the band was the shakeup of Hodgson and Davies' songwriting methods - whereas the first two albums had featured genuine collaborations between the two of them, and they would continue to share writing credits throughout their partnership, here they more or less exclusively contributed their own solo compositions. Hodgson has later gone on record as saying all his songs were written note-for-note before being given to the band to play. Whether Davies' songs also came so prescriptively prepared before the band could have a go at them isn't known, and there's also yet to be any formal confirmation of which songs belong to which writer, though it's generally accepted that whoever sings lead vocals is the writer.

By and large, I tend to favour Davies' songs over Hodgson's, but on Crime Of The Century, as with a few of their other 70s albums, both hit gold every single time. Hodgson's opener "School" is a moody, atmospheric, ghostly piece of music that boasts one of the most doom-laden album intros ever with Davies' harmonica ushering the spidery guitar of the quiet opening which explodes into life with the thundering of Thomson's bass and the sound effects of screaming children in a playground. Davies' chittering, chiming piano solo that comes partway through is one of the finest of its kind. The song segues into "Bloody Well Right" which, after its chirruping, breezy keyboard intro erupts into a swaggering, brash piece of hard rock that, unusually for a Supertramp song, is driven principally by Hodgson's electric guitar riff. "Hide In Your Shell" is one of the album's longer songs, featuring an extended mid-section before exploding back into one of the most jubilant choruses Hodgson ever penned. Throughout the album, "School" aside, Hodgson's songs tend to be the more optimistic pop songs, while Davies' tend to be bleaker and more difficult. "Asylum" sticks to this pattern, being a paranoid piano ballad exploring mental illness that, after a few minutes of relative stability, eventually descends into a cacophony of scratchy guitar, orchestral fills, gibbered vocals and Davies' terrifying wail of "Not quite right!"

The album's second half kicks off with the immortal "Dreamer," possibly the very finest perfect pop song in a discography full of perfect pop songs. It's a song I fell in love with on first listen and still love every time I hear it, driven by Hodgson's trademark "Hammerhands" approach to the keyboard, practically punching the instrument to create the song's immortal bright, staccato sound. "Rudy" is another piece, like "Bloody Well Right," that flits between delicate balladry and angry hard rock and, like "Hide In Your Shell" and "Asylum," explores loneliness and social isolation via the outcast figure of Rudy as he attempts to make a simple train journey. Hodgson's guitar riffs, particularly the muted funk workout in the mid-section (complete with some phenomenal orchestral arrangements), trade off Davies' piano parts beautifully, and it's here that Helliwell's woodwinds are at their most cinematic and ornamental. It's followed by one of Hodgson's finest ballads in "If Everyone Was Listening," which is broken and timid in its verses and triumphant and defiant in its choruses, exploring a relationship through the images of an actor in a theatre.

The album's final piece is its title track, and perhaps the jewel in the Supertramp song. As the best song on the best album of all time, it's possible I consider it to be the greatest song of all time as well, though that's never really an equation I've tried to work out in my head. Regardless, "Crime Of The Century" is a peerlessly dark, brooding, terrifying, cinematic piece of work. Its opening lyrics are admittedly fairly obvious, but there's no denying their dramatic effect ("Who are these men of lust, greed and glory? Rip off the masks and let's see. But that's not right, oh no, what's the story? Look, there's you and there's me.") From there there's a cacophonous explosion into the finest, most incendiary guitar solo Hodgson ever played, which then quietly dies down and ushers in Davies' expertly reserved, chiming piano riff. As Siebenberg's thundering drums and the quiet buzz of synths slowly build, the apocalyptic droning of a water gong heralds one of the most spine-tingling moments in the history of music, and from there Helliwell's saxophones howl the whole thing back into quietness, rounding off one of the songs that never fails to make me tremble with excitement.

So often at this point in these reviews I then start to talk about my nitpicks with an album, with the things that don't quite work. Even nine years on, there is still nothing about Crime Of The Century that even comes close to annoying me, or feeling redundant. It represents one of those rare moments in music when a group of people made something utterly perfect, that never once drops the ball. Hell, even Dark Side has the relative tedium of "On The Run" to sit through. Crime Of The Century has you riveted throughout, and it's never been bettered. It's been a near-constant presence on my list of frequently listened to albums for the best part of a decade, and it's not likely to go away. While the album didn't end up being the band's biggest hit (that would be taken by the enormous success of Breakfast In America in 1979), it did finally give them some radio success and proper exposure, and confirmed them as one of the most exciting, and more accessible, prog acts of the 70s. The more pop-leaning stuff of their later albums means few people remember quite how vital and experimental and unique Supertramp's work was when at its peak, and Crime Of The Century is the perfect example of quite what they could achieve.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson.

1. School

2. Bloody Well Right

3. Hide In Your Shell

4. Asylum

5. Dreamer

6. Rudy

7. If Everyone Was Listening

8. Crime Of The Century