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

Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic

Released - February 1974

Genre - Jazz Rock

Producer - Gary Katz

Selected Personnel - Donald Fagen (Keyboards/Saxophone/Vocals); Walter Becker (Bass/Guitar); Jeff Baxter (Guitar); Denny Dias (Guitar); Jim Hodder (Backing Vocals); Jim Gordon (Drums); Michael Omartian (Keyboards); David Paich (Keyboards); Wilton Felder (Bass); Dean Parks (Guitar/Banjo); Plas Johnson (Saxophone); Jeff Porcaro (Drums); Victor Feldman (Percussion)

Standout Track - Pretzel Logic

Steely Dan's third album is not my favourite of theirs, as it would be difficult to argue that it's objectively better than their other masterpieces like Can't Buy A Thrill or Aja. That said, it probably is the Steely Dan album that's closest to my heart, despite my awareness of its drawbacks and limitations, and that for two main reasons. Firstly, it features by far and away my favourite Steely Dan song in its marvellous title track, and secondly, it's the one that most strongly takes me back to how I first discovered this wonderful band. As I've mentioned elsewhere, it was a friend's mum who is sadly no longer with us who first told me that "If I liked Supertramp, I'd love Steely Dan." My friend Eve piped up with a huge amount of endearing enthusiasm for the song "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," which her dad used to sing to her as a kid as "Evie Don't Lose That Number." It's an endearingly sweet story that has long stayed with me, and that prompted me to quickly seek out Pretzel Logic, the album containing that song, as one of the first Steely Dan albums to become familiar with.

As a piece of historical interest, it essentially captures the band in an interesting transitional period, and delivers some of their very best music in the meantime. After the longer, slightly more free-form instrumental jams of Countdown To Ecstasy, it sees de facto bandleaders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen instead trying to channel their songwriting into the three-minute-pop-song format in a way that, while largely successful, they never really stuck with - certainly by the time of their next great album, 1976's The Royal Scam, they were back to longer and slightly more free-form musical territory. But their effort to condense their jazzy, bohemian sensibilities into a more accessible, radio-friendly format did begin to see the more earnest beginnings of Becker and Fagen's notoriously exacting method of working in the recording studio, to the frustrations of their fellow band members. While plenty of session musicians and overdubs had been used to finely hone the band's sound on their early albums, this was the first time that guitarists Jeff Baxter and Denny Dias, plus drummer Jim Hodder began to feel alienated and sidelined by the bandleaders' insistence on using multiple session musicians and marginalising their own contributions. Hodder, formerly the band's full-time drummer, is here relegated solely to backing vocals, and had departed the band by the time of 1975's Katy Lied.

To their credit, though, Becker and Fagen's reliance on session musicans was occasionally at their own expense as well as that of their bandmates - Becker has claimed that he was so impressed with the bass playing of sessionman Chuck Rainey that he no longer felt the need to play bass himself, and started contributing additional guitar as well as bass in order to continue contributing. Also to the frustration of the rest of the band, Becker and Fagen were increasingly less interested in touring or live performance, and the idea of sculpting music out of disparate parts in the studio became their main raison d'etre - there's a real sense beginning with Pretzel Logic that Steely Dan was barely a band in any conventional sense, but rather a musical project helmed by Becker and Fagen in which they exactingly tried to find the best possible way of packaging and presenting their musical ideas.

And in doing so they here created some of their finest music, even if the overall package is a somewhat mixed affair. "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" was the album's big hit, proving that the duo's interest in radio-friendly material paid major dividends as it became one of their best-known songs. From the swathes of chimes and slow percussive intro, slightly recalling the Latin rhythms of "Do It Again" on Can't Buy A Thrill, to its once-heard, never-forgotten pop chorus, it's a classic tune, with a taut, unshowy guitar solo that, as ever with Steely Dan, serves an entirely functional purpose without indulging in excessive virtuosity or intensity. Then there's the true showstopper, the moody and brilliant "Pretzel Logic," which follows the formula of ancient blues tunes but swathes it in murky keyboard fills and chattering drums, with occasional snarls of fearsome guitar and irresistably catchy harmonies on its chorus, it's easily the best combination of mood and pop catchiness that Steely Dan ever achieved. Allegedly, it's some kind of exploration of the idea of time travel, but one I've never quite managed to unravel ("I have never met Napoleon, but I plan to find the time" is easy enough, but, as ever with Steely Dan, there's plenty of other nonsense here, like that bit about shoes). But its meaning is secondary to the incredible mood that pervades the whole thing. The other song that really makes a strong impact is the brilliant, chugging rock of "Night By Night," with its insistent guitar riff.

Pretzel Logic's downfall is that, unlike most other great Steely Dan records, beyond those three excellent tracks there's not a huge amount to really stick in the mind. There's a great cover of the jazz instrumental "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" that sees Baxter ably justifying his presence by impersonating a muted trombone with his guitar, but there's other a lot of throwaway, forgettable stuff like "Through With Buzz" and the rockabilly fluff of "With A Gun." The problem with people like Becker and Fagen, who usually paint on a wide canvas, trying to condense everything into a three-minute format is that it inherently results in a few misses here and there. Steely Dan feels like a band that just functions better when given room to stretch its legs, and the duo's songwriting is more enjoyable when it has ample space to explore its more idiosyncratic elements, rather than trying desperately to fit into a radio format. "Barrytown" is good fun, and there are some nice chord progressions and harmonies in "Charlie Freak," but by and large a good half of the record tends to pass me by without exciting me much.

Still, it's a short enough album that its moments of definite filler don't outstay their welcome, and in places it manages to be right up there with the very best things that Steely Dan ever achieved. It also reversed the downward fortunes that had crept in with the fairly ambivalent response to Countdown To Ecstasy thanks to the solid performance of "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" as a single. While Becker and Fagen might not have stuck for long with their three-minute-pop-song format, the positive response to Pretzel Logic presumably encouraged them to forge ahead with their new aversion to live performance and their commitment to using Steely Dan as a means of finessing and sculpting sound and perfecting the recording of their songs rather than as a real functioning band, as that attitude only increased over subsequent years, ultimately reaching the heights of using as many as 42 session musicians on 1980's Gaucho. The other band members gradually distanced themselves from Steely Dan, with both Baxter and Hodder deciding to call it a day straight after Pretzel Logic. They were perhaps wise to extricate themselves just before Steely Dan recorded objectively their worst album, the hugely disappointing Katy Lied, but the "band" of sorts would be back in 1976 with something that reached the same heights as Pretzel Logic, but achieved far greater consistency.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, except where noted.

1. Rikki Don't Lose That Number

2. Night By Night

3. Any Major Dude Will Tell You

4. Barrytown

5. East St. Louis Toodle-Oo (Duke Ellington & Bubber Miley)

6. Parker's Band

7. Through With Buzz

8. Pretzel Logic

9. With A Gun

10. Charlie Freak

11. Monkey In Your Soul

Roxy Music - Country Life

Released - November 1974

Genre - Art Rock

Producer - Chris Thomas; John Punter & Roxy Music

Selected Personnel - Bryan Ferry (Vocals/Keyboards/Harmonica); John Gustafson (Bass); Eddie Jobson (Violin/Keyboards); Andy Mackay (Oboe/Saxophone); Phil Manzanera (Guitar); Paul Thompson (Drums)

Standout Track - The Thrill Of It All

My most lasting memory of my first encounter with Roxy Music's wonderful Country Life was that, within its first twenty-five seconds the band totally obliterated all memory of their previous album, 1973's Stranded. After its compellingly urgent keyboard riff that kicks things off, album opener "The Thrill Of It All" quickly explodes into one of the most exciting and downright brilliant songs of Roxy Music's ouvre, replete with Bryan Ferry's sonorous wails, Phil Manzanera's incendiary guitar work and frenetic electric violin solos from Eddie Jobson. It still ranks as one of the band's crowning achievements, and was single-handedly responsible for restoring my faith in them after the disappointment in Stranded. These days, Stranded has come to creep up a little in my estimations, but I still find whole swathes of it too ponderous and aimless for me to really enjoy it. For me, it shows a band struggling to find a sense of direction in the wake of the departure of Brian Eno, who had lent so much colour and avant-garde weirdness to their first two records. In the wake of his departure, Ferry had to try and balance out his own desire to just write catchy pop songs with the need to prove that they could still deliver as a kitsch art rock outfit. It doesn't quite deliver on either count, but by the time the band had had some time to develop some truly great material, Country Life is ample proof that even without Eno they were able to create the same brilliant, colourful art rock that made Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure such instant classics.

Part of the newfound confidence might be that, after the autocratic control Ferry had exercised over Roxy Music in its early years that ultimately led to Eno's departure, they had started to function a little more as a democratic unit. Starting on Stranded, guitarist Manzanera and saxophonist/oboeist Andy Mackay had started sharing writing duties with Ferry on some songs. While the Manzanera and Mackay co-writes on Country Life aren't necessarily all the standout tracks (the brilliant standout "The Thrill Of It All" is a solo Ferry composition), there's still a sense that this is a band more comfortable in playing together than on the more stultifying and lacklustre mood of Stranded. The songwriting is also generally of high enough quality to make you forget the absence of Eno's distortion and synthesiser effects which lent so much flavour to the earlier stuff. In his place is Jobson, who has a much less esoteric and inventive approach to sound to adequately replicate Eno's contributions but instead lends colour and weirdness courtesy of his electric violin work, which slashes across in searing lines on tracks like "The Thrill Of It All" and "Out Of The Blue."

There's also Ferry's natural sense of louche charisma and charming weirdness that keeps things from ever feeling too conventional - the warbling backing vocals of "All I Want Is You" and the brash menace of "Casanova" are palpably weird. Sonic effects are also used effectively on the clanging, bell-like cacophony of Manzanera's guitar riff that opens "All I Want Is You," and in the disorienting, space-like flanging effects on "Out Of The Blue." The one thing that lets Country Life down isn't in any specific track - there are precious few low-points here, save for the slightly perfunctory-seeming "A Really Good Time," which seems like a bit of dead air between the swaggering "Casanova" and the cartoonish, upbeat "Prairie Rose" - but in the general sense that it rarely elevates the idea of what Roxy Music can achieve. Only on "The Thrill Of It All" is there are any really tangible sense that the band is upping their game and building on what's come before, while the rest is a collection of songs that ably demonstrate that they were still a force to be reckoned with and that Stranded didn't represent a downward slide.

But, while Roxy Music might no longer feel like they're truly pushing the envelope of what rock music can achieve, they rarely put together a finer collection of songs on which to really enjoy themselves. In addition the highlights I've already mentioned, there's the lighthearted American boogie of "If It Takes All Night" which, with its colourful harmonica solo from Ferry, shows the band feeling more American in its style and influences then ever before or after ("Prairie Rose," a tribute to the Texan home of Ferry's then-girlfriend Jerry Hall, later to marry Mick Jagger, further demonstrates the band's interest in Americana at the time). From the light and colour of "If It Takes All Night" we descend into the murkier, stranger menace of "Bitter-Suite," which incorporates Germanic oom-pah brass and sways wildly from quietly mesmeric to brashly terrifying. The album's final great standout tracks are the aforementioned "Casanova," a brilliantly confident slice of brash rock distinguished by Mackay's acrobatic oboe work, and "Prairie Rose," another of the band's most feelgood tracks which provides ample room for some impassioned warbling from Ferry, and for the American flavour of Manzanera's slide guitar.

As mentioned, few of these songs are ever quite as exciting or new as they felt on Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure, but there's also no point on the record where it really feels like we're listening to formerly great band going through the motions. Ultimately it's somewhere between the two - a band recapturing what made them great and really having fun with it, delivering a hugely entertaining album in the process. Sadly, it would be the last great album they made for a long time. 1975's Siren provided them with their only US hit, the brilliant "Love Is The Drug" but, other than that and a compellingly menacing song called "Sentimental Fool," it has little great material to recommend it. From there, the band effectively split for a few years while each of them focused on solo projects before returning in 1978 as a much more slick, pop act, anticipating the sophisticated pop sound of the New Romantic movement. Their "comeback" album Manifesto is largely forgettable, meaning their next moment of greatness after Country Life was 1980's Flesh + Blood. The band showcased by that album, furthermore, feels totally different in spirit and tone than the avant-garde weirdos of the early years, meaning Country Life is a swansong of sorts - an almost-final hoorah for one of the greatest pioneers of art rock in the early 70s.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Bryan Ferry except where noted.

1. The Thrill Of It All

2. Three And Nine (Bryan Ferry & Andy Mackay)

3. All I Want Is You

4. Out Of The Blue (Bryan Ferry & Phil Manzanera)

5. If It Takes All Night

6. Bitter-Suite (Bryan Ferry & Andy Mackay)

7. Triptych

8. Casanova

9. A Really Good Time

10. Prairie Rose (Bryan Ferry & Phil Manzanera)