Supertramp - Indelibly Stamped

Released - June 1971

Genre - Rock

Producer - Supertramp

Selected Personnel - Roger Hodgson (Guitar/Bass/Vocals); Rick Davies (Keyboards/Harmonica/Vocals); Frank Farrell (Bass/Piano/Accordion); Dave Winthrop (Flute/Saxophone/Vocals); Kevin Currie (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Travelled

This is inevitably one of those albums people will only ever hear when they have an almost inexhaustible love for Supertramp that leads them way beyond the safety of their successful albums. It doesn't even have the clout or interest value of being their debut, it's little more than an underperforming, undervalued obscurity from their very early days before they discovered any sort of signature sound or any degree or critical or commercial success. As is so often the case with such albums, that's a terrible shame as it contains some great music even if it is a long way from being their best. I discovered Inevitably Stamped after I'd been listening to Supertramp for about four years, gradually expanding my understanding and appreciation of them and slowly giving in to the urge to just track down everything they ever did and get a handle on the entire discography. It's a curious specimen as it shows them moving decidedly away from the typical early 70s prog stylings of their self-titled debut and beginning to develop something more of the identity that would come to define the band, though the music itself remains in a curious in-between stage as they begin to push towards the sound of Crime Of The Century onwards.

The release of the Supertramp album went pretty much unnoticed by the general public, though it received its fair due of critical appreciation. In the wake of its underperformance, pretty much the entire band disintegrated around the core creative duo of Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies, with first guitarist and lyricist Richard Palmer-James jumping ship, followed swiftly by drummer Robert Millar. An interim version of the band was amassed for the followup album, although this iteration of the lineup was doomed to not last long. Kevin Currie was recruited on drums with Frank Farrell on bass and piano (though bass duties continued to be shared alongside Hodgson, and Davies contributed the majority of the keyboard parts), but the most significant new addition was flautist and saxophonist Dave Winthrop (who also sings lead vocals on the atrocious "Potter"). While Winthrop himself didn't last long, his addition demonstrates that Davies and Hodgson had recognised the need to expand the band's musical pallette and structure by adding a permanent member on wind instruments, paving the way for the recruitment of John Helliwell and the saxophone solos that would become one of the band's trademarks. Hodgson has since confessed that Indelibly Stamped was a desperate attempt to justify the band's existence to their financial backer, Stanley August Miesegaes. Their early attempts at out-and-out prog rock had failed to strike a chord with the listening public, so in many ways Indelibly Stamped is a conscious effort to keep things simpler, to shy away from excess and make a simpler traditional rock album while keeping the broad musical pallette of the debut.

Perhaps the most significant thing that makes this album significant in the Supertramp discography is that it marks the first time that the musical influences and personalities of Davies and Hodgson began working independently and pulling the album in different directions. It's an interplay that generally created albums of stunning diversity and versatility and only rarely resulted in creative deadlocks and personal differences (though these would gradually escalate before Hodgson's inevitable departure in the 80s). Though every Supertramp song was credited jointly to Davies and Hodgson, generally every song was written by whoever sang it, and in recent years (largely due to the ego of Hodgson, who has gone about retroactively claiming ownership of most of the band's big hits) there has been more of an effort to attribute each song to its owner. On Indelibly Stamped, some of the credits still aren't clear (whoever wrote "Potter" has a lot to answer for), so I've stuck with the joint credits, but one can assume from Davies's sudden leap to lead vocalist on most songs, having only sung co-lead on one song on the previous album, that he was responsible for the majority. And the songs' musical styles would bear that out - the songs on which Hodgson sings lead are all more acoustic, pastoral songs in the vein of "Words Unspoken" from Supertramp, while Davies's songs are more bluesy rockers or jazzy ballads. Whereas previously they'd attempted to make those disparate styles gel together in one song, here the songs stand apart and it makes for an interesting record of two halves.

Whereas Hodgson penned most of the big hits in Supertramp's back catalogue, it's often the Davies songs that I come back to most often, generally being more musically complex and ambitious than the more radio-friendly pop music Hodgson would come to excel at, but Indelibly Stamped is one of the few albums where Hodgson's contributions outdo Davies's. "Travelled" is a superb song, opening with plangent recorders before turning into a fine piece of Pentangle-esque folk rock augmented by Winthrop's frenetic sax solo. "Rosie Had Everything Planned" is another magnificent song, a simple melody to die for and an old-fashioned Beatles-esque riff making it one of the catchiest, and loveliest, songs in the band's discography. "Aries" is the other great Hodgson track, being the closest thing here to their earlier prog style, an extended mostly instrumental jam over an acoustic riff and principally defined by Davies's swirling organ solos and Winthrop's reedy flute work. Davies's songs are by no means weak, however - "Remember" is a fine piece of horn-based blues rock with a great party vibe to it, and "Forever," while a little plodding in places, is just a very sweet and simple ballad that demonstrates how great Davies could be with little more than his voice and a couple of simple chords. Elsewhere, things get a little more forgettable, particularly on the album's rather weak second side, which only really has "Aries" to recommend it. Both "Coming Home To See You" and "Friend In Need" are jazzy piano-based shuffles, and the aforementioned "Potter" is ruined not only by Winthrop's unconvincing vocal but by its generally irritating melody and arrangement. Not only that, even when doing something genuinely enjoyable on the album's more out-and-out rock and roll moments such as "Remember" or "Your Poppa Don't Mind," there's a sense that conventional rock music just isn't what this band is cut out to do - it doesn't quite convince as being something they really had their hearts in. Perhaps the desperation and the urgency to do something commercially successful put too much pressure on the recording and resulted in something the band didn't fully believe in as it wasn't something they had made out of genuinely being inspired or motivated to do something.

But it by no means deserves its neglected status - it contains some of Hodgson's best songs, and it's a very interesting pointer towards where they would go next. Sadly, it would again fail to make any impact on the public at all, and resulted in Hodgson and Davies once again being abandoned by their fellow bandmates. Not only that, Miesegaes decided he'd gambled too much on this band to have them fail twice and withdrew their financial backing. Perhaps in doing so he gave the duo the spur they needed - they no longer had anybody to impress, so they could do what they like. They'd done out-and-out prog and they'd done out-and-out rock and roll, and neither had quite worked for them. Their next album would see them going further out of their way to unite those two approaches and in so doing, wind up creating what I still believe to this day is the greatest album of all time. It would take them another three years to do it, though.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson.

1. Your Poppa Don't Mind

2. Travelled

3. Rosie Had Everything Planned (Frank Farrell & Roger Hodgson)

4. Remember

5. Forever

6. Potter

7. Coming Home To See You

8. Times Have Changed

9. Friend In Need

10. Aries

Pink Floyd - Meddle

Released - October 1971

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Pink Floyd

Selected Personnel - David Gilmour (Guitar/Vocals/Bass/Harmonica); Roger Waters (Bass/Vocals/Guitar); Richard Wright (Organ/Piano/Vocals); Nick Mason (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Echoes

While it's far from their most consistently brilliant album, 1971's Meddle represents perhaps the first time Pink Floyd succeeded in recording something genuinely phenomenal. The titular suite from the previous year's Atom Heart Mother had been grandiose, ambitious and exciting but in some ways it represented a sort of logical progression of the neoclassicism first tentatively stumbled upon by Brian Wilson and the Beatles back in the mid-60s. With "Echoes," however, Floyd really pushed things into overdrive and created something that sounded unlike anything that had come before, delivering in the process what is undoubtedly the finest side-long prog epic of all time (and there are a lot of them). Meddle was an album it took me a long time to love - on initial hearings, I was immediately blown away by its two bookend tracks, but found everything in between them fairly dull and forgettable. Eventually, most of those filler tracks wormed their way into my affections, and even if they hadn't, what the band achieved on those first and last tracks is incredible enough to merit this album a well-deserved place in history. It's certainly the pinnacle of everything Pink Floyd achieved prior to The Dark Side Of The Moon, and still stands up as one of their crowning efforts.

The circumstances surrounding the album's creation all sow seeds for serious doubt - coming off the back of their extensive touring in support of Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd had finally achieved a certain degree of financial stability and critical notice, and perhaps felt a certain pressure to justify it with their next record. However, they found themselves in the studio with no idea as to any theme or central idea to work on, and so instead decided to focus the sessions on a series of sonic experiments to see where they would lead them. It's the kind of idea that could so easily have led them into creating something entirely self-indulgent and devoid of musical merit, and indeed these experiments stalled for a long time and struggled to deliver anything of worth. But finally, from these awkward and half-hearted experimental sessions came a single noise - a sonar-like "ping" created by Richard Wright's distortion of a keyboard note - that would become the starting point for one of their greatest works. After that initial breakthrough, the experiments continued to deliver successful and exciting new sounds, many of them deriving from accidental discoveries (particular guitar effects were discovered as a result of guitars being incorrectly plugged into equipment, and so on).

First, though, it's worth dealing with the filler. In between the opening and closing tracks, which both benefit immensely from these sonic experiments, come four more traditional songs, and it's certainly fair to say they make up the album's low point. It's not that Floyd in general can't handle more traditional composition - they'd managed it perfectly well on earlier albums, with the likes of the gloriously hazy "Grantchester Meadows" from Ummagumma. But here, perhaps the exciting developments of the new sounds the band were playing with meant their hearts just weren't in the more conventional material and they turned in a selection of songs below their usual standard. "Seamus" is particularly weak, and regularly gets voted the worst Floyd song of all time, being a non-committal, almost tongue-in-cheek blues number delivered vocally almost as an afterthought by Roger Waters and accompanied by a barking dog. "Fearless" is another disappointing song, a fairly plodding acoustic number that's never managed to do much to excite me. "A Pillow Of Winds" takes some time to really appreciate but eventually reveals itself as a genuinely enjoyable, mellow acoustic love song (this time with the softer tones of David Gilmour delivering the lead vocals), while "San Tropez" is a fun, almost novelty, jazz-inflected piece of sunny pop music. Ultimately, though, while a couple of these songs are fairly enjoyable in their own right, they really are just place-holders to make up a full album alongside the truly great songs.

First there's "One Of These Days," the (almost) instrumentals that kicks things off. From the rushing of wind that first greets the ears at the album's opening and into the insistent, chugging distorted bass riff (played by both Waters and Gilmour on two guitars), it develops into one of the finest slices of hard rock Floyd would ever deliver. It's a fairly simple song, churning over that same addictive bass riff and decorating it with the razor-sharp waves of Wright's keyboard and the snaking, tortured guitar lines of Gilmour weaving in amongst it all, but via the sonic distortions being manipulated by the band during the sessions, turns into something truly weird and menacing (Nick Mason's distorted growl midway through of "One of these days I'm gonna cut you into little pieces" is one of the weirdest moments the band ever captured on record). It's also perhaps one of the finest showcases for the band as a complete unit, with every single member contributing something essential to the sound as a whole, down to Nick Mason's urgent drumming that propels it forward. By the end of "Echoes," however, the brilliance of "One Of These Days" is a distant memory. "Echoes" is something else. If ever there was a song that manages to sum up by itself everything that make Floyd great, this is it. From out of the mist and the weirdness of Wright's opening sonar ping and cloudy keyboard soundscapes comes the gentle lilt of Gilmour's vocals and the song's opening section, which slowly builds in intensity before segueing brilliantly to a mid-tempo funk groove over which Gilmour delivers one of his finest bluesy solos. The mid-section of the song is something that will try the patience of some but showcases the fruits of the band's experimentation, being an almost proto-ambient soundscape of wind-like humming and tortured screaming all conjured from the canvas of the recording studio. Even I'll admit that it goes on too long, though the weirdness that Floyd were able to conjure from the starting point of just trying to develop a coherent musical idea is impressive. From there Wright's organ takes the lead and ushers the song into its closing section, slowly building to a triumphant crescendo as Gilmour's insistent, muted guitar riff slowly builds in intensity to one of the most explosive moments in Floyd's discography before descending back into the opening theme.

"Echoes" is, put simply, one of prog's crowning achievements and Exhibit A for those who complain that prog is music that sacrifices heart or power for intelligence. There are moments in "Echoes" that rank among some of the finest, most jaw-droppingly stunning moments in the history of rock music, even when you factor in the few minutes of directionless sound collage the listener has to sit through in the middle. Ultimately, my reservations about the other tracks on the album really are groundless - if Floyd had released just "One Of These Days" and "Echoes" as a short album, it would be a shoe-in for one of the best albums of all time, so the additional material shouldn't really be seen as a downside. It is a shame that, away from the experimental compositional techniques that had helped them to really find their muse on those two songs, they struggled to really recapture the same sense of exellence, but it's a complaint one can't really make without feeling ever so slightly ungrateful. With Meddle, Floyd cemented their place as a musical force to be reckoned with - if somebody had suggested after Atom Heart Mother that they would go on to become one of the most successful and iconic bands of all time, perhaps it would have been easy to be cynical. After Meddle, it was a destiny that only a true cynic could begrudge them.

Track Listing:

1. One Of These Days (Roger Waters; David Gilmour; Richard Wright & Nick Mason)

2. A Pillow Of Winds (Roger Waters & David Gilmour)

3. Fearless (Roger Waters & David Gilmour)

4. San Tropez (Roger Waters)

5. Seamus (Roger Waters; David Gilmour; Richard Wright & Nick Mason)

6. Echoes (Roger Waters; David Gilmour; Richard Wright & Nick Mason)

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

Released - November 1971

Genre - Hard Rock

Producer - Jimmy Page

Selected Personnel - Robert Plant (Vocals/Harmonica); Jimmy Page (Guitar); John Paul Jones (Bass/Keyboards); John Bonham (Drums)

Standout Track - When The Levee Breaks

So, it's time for an admission that will perhaps seem out of keeping with the music taste I've demonstrated so far on this blog - I don't much care for Led Zeppelin. Quite why I find difficult to express. I'm a big fan of classic rock, particularly acts like Zeppelin with a taste for the theatrical and the over-the-top. Zeppelin were certainly never a prog rock act (I'll stop going on about prog eventually, I promise. I mean, by the time I get to the mid-70s I'll pretty much have to), but they had a penchant for grandiose ideas and lengthy solos that the likes of the Rolling Stones and the more traditional rock acts like the Who and the Rolling Stones would have balked at. But for whatever reason, their music has just never incited much passion in me. When it's good, it's very good, but far too often I find it a rather plodding, uninspired mashup of ideas snatched from the blues, folk and the nascent heavy metal scene without often managing to do anything really musically innovative or arresting. Their heavy metal qualities push them into territory I'm not too keen on (I'm similarly unimpressed by the work of the likes of Black Sabbath and their ilk), while their more folk/blues/hard rock work just doesn't sound that fresh very often. It could be any number of reasons - perhaps I came to them too late having heard too many other hard rock acts who had borrowed from them, and perversely the band that was one of the biggest pioneers in classic rock sounded somewhat stale by comparison with similar music I already loved. It's also probably the case that Led Zeppelin could very easily be a band I would enjoy more if I made more of a conscious effort to get into them. There are many artists in my collection who it took me time to really appreciate as well as ones that hooked me in immediately, and all the ingredients are there for Zeppelin to become one of those, but it just hasn't happened yet. The same is true of the Stones, who one day I'll find time to give more attention to. But anyway, when cataloguing a list of the greatest albums of all time, at times it is necessary to include something by an artist that in general hasn't managed to inspire much awe. Because Led Zeppelin IV is a classic, albeit one beset with problems and low moments and with more than its fair share of filler. But when it's on form it shows Zeppelin at their peak and inspired scores of other great musicians. It's not my favourite classic rock album, but it has some great stuff on offer if given time.

Led Zeppelin had sprung out of the ashes of the seminal 1960s rock group the Yardbirds, led in turn by both Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and then by Jimmy Page in the late 60s. After the Yardbirds eventually splintered around him, Page went on to build a new band which would ultimately become Led Zeppelin. Principally defined by Page's gutsy guitar and the genuinely great vocals of Robert Plant, who is able to slither from a sinewy, oily croon to a raucous howl in moments, the band set about staking their claim as one of the biggest and most iconic rock acts of the late 60s and early 70s. One of their most admirable stances was their insistence that their albums were complete works in their own right and thereby refusing to make radio edits of singles for the sake of the money, and similarly they refused to make lucrative TV appearances, preferring to insist on the value of their music itself by demanding that their fans come and see them live if they wanted to see them. Both hugely commendable statements from a band in the early days of the mass commercialisation of music. 1970 saw the release of Led Zeppelin III, an album I've always found it hard to love (it largely showcases an acoustic, folk-styled version of the band other than the hard-rocking "The Immigrant Song," and personally I don't feel it's a style of music they can pull off). In response to the mixed reactions to III, the band set about creating their master statement, and IV (officially released with no title and often referred to by a whole host of different monikers mostly derived from the album artwork) was that masterwork.

And, in places, they pull it off. The iconic opener "Black Dog" is a barnstorming showcase for Plant's raw screaming vocals, driven by Page's thunderous proto-metal guitar riff. It's a song short on actual musical development, but that makes up for it with sheer guts and power. It acts as one of two standout bookends for the album's first half, the other being the legendary "Stairway To Heaven," a song that's ingrained into everybody's consciousness and is barely even worth saying much about here. Suffice to say, it's a true classic, effectively progressing from the Medieval stylings of its recorder-led intro to Page's iconic firebrand soloing and Page's impassioned wailing at the climax. It's the sound of history being made. On side two, "Going To California" is an elegantly mysterious acoustic ballad that had largely slipped my attention listening to this album until Emily made me listen to it with my full attention and accept that it was one of the album's highlights. Then there's the true standout and the best song Zeppelin ever recorded, the stomping hard rock of "When The Levee Breaks," setting Page's barnstorming heavy riff against the warbling scream of Plant's harmonica while John Bonham's thundering drums crash away at the forefront, to make another true hard rock rock classic. Unfortunately, everything else on the album is, in my eyes, fairly tedious filler that's certainly unremarkable and occasionally actively irritating. "Rock And Roll" is a plodding and unsuccessful attempt to repeat the riff-driven magic of "Black Dog" but again fails to develop enough to do anything fresh, and "The Battle Of Evermore" is a fairly uninspired ballad that shows Zeppelin on cringe-inducing lyrical form, being a paean to the works and worlds of Tolkien. True, most classic prog rock mined similarly ethereal fantasy material for inspiration, but at least the music was innovative and daring enough to mask the ridiculousness of the lyrical preoccupations, whereas here there's just not enough going on to distract from the faint absurdity of Page's sincere conviction singing about "the Dark Lord." Then "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Four Sticks" are two more songs that really do nothing to grab my attention or to develop it in any way.

So, yes, this album has to be included, if nothing else for its phenomenal legacy and status in the annals of history. And for half its running time it shows a band at the top of their game, making rock music with real conviction and power. But it also misfires more frequently than such a revered album should, and even at its best moments does nothing to really convince me to give Led Zeppelin more of a chance than I already have. Perhaps they're just the wrong sort of rock music for me. They would follow up their seminal masterwork with Houses Of The Holy, an album that contains a few moments I genuinely enjoy in the lovely "The Rain Song" or the mysterious "No Quarter," but elsewhere would prove to be further wheel-spinning or repeating of ideas. So, for me, this is the only moment where Led Zeppelin created anything halfway essential. Perhaps I'll come to bite my fist at the thought of this review one day. But for now, Led Zeppelin's place in my list of the greats starts and ends here.

Track Listing:

1. Black Dog (John Paul Jones; Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)

2. Rock And Roll (John Bonham; John Paul Jones; Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)

3. The Battle Of Evermore (Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)

4. Stairway To Heaven (Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)

5. Misty Mountain Hop (John Paul Jones; Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)

6. Four Sticks (Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)

7. Going To California (Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)

8. When The Levee Breaks (John Bonham; Memphis Minnie; John Paul Jones; Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)

Nick Drake - Bryter Layter

Released - November 1970

Producer - Joe Boyd

Selected Personnel - Nick Drake (Vocals/Guitar); Dave Pegg (Bass); David Mattacks (Drums); Richard Thompson (Guitar); Robert Kirby (Orchestrations); Paul Harris (Piano); John Cale (Viola/Celeste/Piano/Organ)

Standout Track - Hazey Jane II

After being talked into giving Nick Drake a try by my new Vietnam-bound friend Emma, as I explained earlier with Five Leaves Left, I decided to give two albums a try. Certain stuff I found online suggested that 1970's Bryter Layter was his worst album (though it still carries a huge amount of acclaim - when an artist leaves a legacy of only three albums, choosing a best or worst is always going to be tricky), so I decided to give it a miss. However, on finding that my housemate Tanya had a copy of it, and having enjoyed Five Leaves Left and Pink Moon immensely, I decided to give it a listen, and was pleasantly surprised by it. If this is the sound of an artist's lowest creative moment, then it's a very special artist indeed. However, it wasn't just the high quality of this delightful record that surprised me, but also its sunniness and optimism and its full-band sound. Neither seemed to fit into the gap between his other two albums, and it feels very different to what I expected would have been the middle-ground leading up to the sparse, unadorned beauty and despair of Pink Moon.

Effectively, I assumed this would sound a lot more like Pink Moon than it does. I also assumed it would have been increasingly easy to detect Drake's depression and feelings of isolation and despair. Even on his final record, the music is so achingly lovely that it's easy to miss the sense of utter despondency and loss in the man himself, while on Five Leaves Left the lush string orchestrations mask any sense of nihilism very well. But it's almost as if Drake's mood had a brief upswing in 1970 and he rediscovered the hope and optimism of songs like "Saturday Sun." The instrumentals on offer here - the gorgeous "Introduction," the perhaps overly sweet "Bryter Layter" and the tranquil closer "Sunday" all suggest sunny optimism and a general sense of being at peace in the world, and both versions of "Hazey Jane" - the slower and quieter first version and the brilliant full-band second version, are so relentlessly feelgood that anybody who told you the man who wrote it was suffering from depression would be difficult to take seriously. Still, the suggestions of Drake's mindset are there - "Fly," complete with the Velvet Underground's John Cale on viola and harpsichord, is a touching plea for understanding and acceptance from those around him, made all the more affecting by Drake's own shyness and fear of social interaction, and "One Of These Things," while it refrains from giving anything more than the barest of hints into what it's really getting at, suggests a general wistful regret at the path his life has led him down.

The bigger surprise, perhaps, is that full band sound. Having learned of how Drake had clashed with producer Joe Boyd during the recording of Bryter Layter, principally over Boyd's insistence on using overdubs in contrast to Drake's desire for a more organic sound, I was surprised to see that Boyd was recalled as producer, and this time pushed for even more overdubs, including a rhythm section. Quite why Drake allowed this is a mystery, but one can assume that the commercial failure of his first album meant he was hardly in a position to make demands to his record company, and Boyd felt he was confident this new direction would result in more sales. As well as Cale, other session men drafted in included the majority of Fairport Convention - the recalled Richard Thompson on electric guitar, Dave Pegg on bass and David Mattacks on drums. On many of the songs, that rhythm section is sadly redundant - as on Five Leaves Left, what really impresses about Drake's work is that beautiful soft voice and his own effortless skill on the acoustic guitar, and there's little need for some of the cocktail jazz feel appended to things here by the half-hearted rhythm tracks. "Poor Boy" redeems itself somewhat by at least going all out down the lounge jazz route, complete with jazzy piano from Paul Harris, saxophone and backing vocalists, while "Hazey Jane II" is the only song that's radically transformed into something fantastic by the band treatment, morphing from the gentle folk of "Hazey Jane I" into an almost psychedelic, gloriously fun piece of 60s-styled pop in the vein of Peter Sarstedt or early Cat Stevens. Elsewhere, one almost wishes again that Boyd would allow Drake to keep things simple - "At The Chime Of A City Clock" is a beautiful melody and a wonderfully introspective lyric about Drake's feelings of anonymity and shyness moving to the city, and hardly needs the flute overdubs Boyd throws at it, and "Fly" is one of Drake's most lyrically fascinating songs, but could stand out far more than it did if it was kept simple and unadorned.

What the added instrumental layers do lend the album, however, is a sun-drenched pop sensibility that makes Bryter Layter stand very much apart from his earlier and later albums. It lacks the pastoral calm of Five Leaves Left or the stark beauty of Pink Moon, but in many ways that's to its advantage. Most of the songs aren't Nick's best, but because they're rendered as glorious uplifting pop songs rather than traditional folk, they sound different and they manage to effortlessly put a smile on the listener's face. It's undoubtedly as light and feelgood as Drake would ever sound, and perhaps that in itself is an achievement for this lovely album - that somebody going through such emotional turmoil could succeed in making something that sounds so sweet.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Nick Drake.

1. Introduction

2. Hazey Jane II

3. At The Chime Of A City Clock

4. One Of These Things First

5. Hazey Jane I

6. Bryter Layter

7. Fly

8. Poor Boy

9. Northern Sky

10. Sunday

King Crimson - Islands

Released - December 1971

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield

Selected Personnel - Robert Fripp (Guitar/Mellotron); Boz Burrell (Vocals/Bass); Mel Collins (Saxophone/Flute); Ian Wallace (Drums/Percussion); Keith Tippett (Piano); Robin Miller (Oboe); Mark Charig (Cornet)

Standout Track - Islands

In the annals of prog history, King Crimson will always be "the unpopular one" of the movement's major players. Having burst onto the scene in 1969 with one of the most incendiary and arresting debuts of all time, In The Court Of The Crimson King, the band seemed poised to become the next big thing, but subsequent shifts in the lineup and the iconoclastic artful preoccupations of bandleader Robert Fripp meant the band went further and further down a road into experimentalism and alien sounds, while bands like Yes and Genesis managed to maintain at least half an eye on what the general public wanted to hear, succeeding in making music that had the artfulness and the intelligence of Crimson but was also capable of delivering strong melodic hooks and broader appeal. The downside of this was the fact that Crimosn were doomed to never really have a major hit to their name or to really embed themselves into the musical consciousness of the nation. The advantage was that, even when they made bad records, they were always interesting and always staying true to the spirit of inventiveness and pushing boundaries that prog was made for. They might never have made a successful album, but they also never made an album that made compromises by attempting to be more radio-friendly and cheapening the band's sound, as could be the said for the likes of Yes's rather tedious effort Tormato. Even in the 80s, when most other prog bands morphed into stadium pop rock acts to survive the sea-change in audience sensibilities, Crimson responded by morphing into Talking Heads-style purveyors of New Wave weirdness. By 1971, that destiny had more or less been carved out for them (1973 would see a brief resurgence in their popularity, but by now Fripp & co. had more or less committed to the idea of making whatever the hell they wanted no matter whether the buying public would care for it).

It's in this mindset that Islands appeared, one of the weirder records the band put out in its diverse styles and weird, muddy sound. In the aftermath of Lizard, the majority of the band had jumped ship due to their distaste for the avant-garde jazz and neo-classical sound of the album, most of them being fairly conventional rhythm-and-blues fans. Fripp was left with lyricist Pete Sinfield (whose relationship with Fripp was strained by this time as both were increasingly interested in very different musical territories) and saxophonist Mel Collins. To this lineup was added drummer Ian Wallace and bassist and vocalist Boz Burrell. That just a few years later Burrell, who croons out some neo-classical poetry and jams along to a menacing art rock monster track, would be playing bass for the back-to-basics bluesy rock of Bad Company is one of the strange unforseeable twists of fate that occur all the time in music. Here, despite going on to be such an icon of classic hard rock, Burrell acquits himself well with Crimson's style, being an infinitely more accomplished and nuanced singer than the outgoing Gordon Haskell. However, there is a definite sense listening to Islands that this is no longer a functioning band but a bizarre musical project spinning out of the ambitious mind of Fripp himself - one song, the lovely "Prelude: Song Of The Gulls" features only Robin Miller's plaintive oboe set to the lush orchestrations of a string quartet. It's a beautiful piece, but one that sets King Crimson apart as a collection of musical ideas played by one man and whoever he can convince to work with him rather than a group of people playing and working together.

This has its ups and its downs - Fripp's commitment to weird ideas and to musical diversity and ambition creates some of the album's least convincing moments. The opening "Formentera Lady" is a fiercely dull, plodding piece that opens with the muddy scraping of a cello and then slogs its way through some typical Sinfield lyrical nonsense before segueing into "Sailor's Tale." That lengthy beast eventually picks up speed and becomes genuinely impressive via Fripp's astonishingly frenetic guitar shredding and Burrell's earth-shattering explosive bass near the song's climax. Up until that, it continues to plod through the same slow patterns set up by "Formentera Lady." From then on, however, this album is a real revelation and a forgotten classic. "The Letters" is a real showcase for the nightmarish noise explosions that Crimson can do so well, and also the greatest example of what a great vocalist Burrell was capable of being. From his hushed intonation of the opening lines it moves through the cacophany of saxes and distorted guitar that wail through the song's midsection to climax with Burrell's spine-chillingly passionate wail near the end. It's followed by "Ladies Of The Road," perhaps the most traditional blues-influenced song King Crimson ever recorded, but rendered characteristically weird and unusual by Fripp's distorted guitar effects, while Burrell's smug, achingly cool rendition of the song makes you almost overlook just how misogynistic it is. The band then pulls off a trick they managed very rarely elsewhere in their career, and manage to finish the album off with two tracks of intense beauty. The aforementioned "Prelude: Song Of The Gulls" is a pleasant little number, but the real highlight of the record (and one of the highlights of the band's career) is the beautifully tranquil "Islands," which sees Burrell's voice retreating back into the softness of the opening strains of "The Letters" and narrating a scene of isolated idyll over the gently lilting piano of Keith Tippett. The song slowly builds in grandeur and magnificence as Fripp's stately Mellotron comes to dominate and Mark Charig's improvised cornet solos take off into the stratosphere as the whole thing builds to an ecstatic climax. For a band known for being frightening and abnormal and nightmarish, it's a rare insight into just how beautiful they could be when Fripp really set his mind to it, and is one of the great beauties of prog music. Sadly, it's doomed to never be heard by anyone considering how neglected this album is in the King Crimson discography.

Genrally, it's a much more cohesive and coherent album than Lizard, despite the plodding tedium of most of the first two tracks. Sadly, it was not to be an indication of any sort of new direction for King Crimson, as yet another reshuffle of the lineup was on the cards. Fripp increasingly felt himself moving in a different musical direction to Sinfield, who favoured the calmer, more introspective moments of Islands over Fripp's preferred moments of weird-sounding innovation, and the two soon went their separate ways. The rest of the band would soon follow, feeling unable to cohere with Fripp's tyrannical control over the group. As a result, King Crimson would cease to exist for a couple of years before returning as a radically new beast in 1973 to deliver a trilogy of albums that would be perhaps their last essential work. Islands, then, is the final outing for the symphonic and more "traditional" prog sound of early Crimson before they truly changed their identity, and it's a fitting testament to everything those early iterations of the band achieved. It's nowhere near as surprising or accomplished as In The Court Of The Crimson King, but it almost makes up for it in elegance and beauty.

Track Listing:

1. Formentera Lady (Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield)

2. Sailor's Tale (Robert Fripp)

3. The Letters (Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield)

4. Ladies Of The Road (Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield)

5. Prelude: Song Of The Gulls (Robert Fripp)

6. Islands (Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield)

Joni Mitchell - Blue

Released - June 1971

Genre - Folk

Producer - Joni Mitchell

Selected Personnel - Joni Mitchell (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Dulcimer); Stephen Stills (Bass/Guitar); James Taylor (Guitar); Pete Kleinow (Pedal Steel); Russ Kunkel (Drums)

Standout Track - Little Green

As I've mentioned in some of my reviews for her earlier albums, my love of Joni Mitchell goes back a long way. Due to my mum's almost obsessive love for her music, her songs were part of the general tapestry of sound that surrounded me as I grew up. Still, it was generally a sort of passive osmosis that resulted in her work being familiar to me, and when I came to give her discography proper attention at uni, there was many an "Oh, this song!" moment as various fragments of song from my childhood and adolescence gradually slotted into place in history. There were only two albums that, when I came to listen to them properly, were completely familiar in their entirety, and they were 1976's Hejira and 1971's Blue. From this I can only surmise that they were my mum's favourites, and rightly so. Whether that relentless osmosis of hearing them over and over again for years is instrumental in this appraisal or not, it's a no-brainer for me that Blue and Hejira are Mitchell's two creative pinnacles. Which one is her masterwork is too close a call, really - Hejira has the greater musical ambition and personal resonances for me, but Blue has the heart and the majesty. It is the most heart-stoppingly beautiful and personal thing Mitchell ever recorded, perhaps even the most starkly profound and personal record ever made (it's up there in my book with Antony and the Johnsons' I Am A Bird Now). It manages to be cold, distant, sad, quiet, yearning, joyful, loving, tender and warm all at the same time, embracing all the dissonances and complexities of a woman in emotional turmoil.

Blue represents the moment at which Mitchell finally decided to focus all her attention on her own emotions and demons for inspiration. While earlier songs like "Both Sides, Now" had been introspective reflections on life and love, the majority of her work had involved her taking stock of the world around her and reporting on it, and the level of self-analysis and reflection seen on Blue was unprecedented. In the wake of the huge commercial success of Ladies Of The Canyon, Mitchell broke up with Graham Nash and was soon pursuing an intense relationship with James Taylor. It was Taylor that would prove to be the critical influence on Mitchell's songwriting for the new album, which was recorded in the wake of their subsequent break-up, which left her totally devastated. Quite what the atmosphere must have been like in the studio, with Taylor himself overdubbing guitar parts for such intensely personal songs about his relationship with Mitchell, is anyone's guess, but it resulted in something phenomenal. Quite when these songs were composed isn't clear - they might have been written during the relationship itself or after it was broken off, but either way there's a terribly fragile, tremulous sense of vulnerability in all of them. The deceptively sunny and upbeat opener "All I Want" paints a seemingly rosy picture of a relationship, but behind its surface reveals a woman petrified of being unable to attain the things she wants, to be able to make the man she loves happy, to find the person she wants to be with on her "lonely road." The beautiful "A Case Of You" makes a similar point, looking back to the tentative and excited early days of a love affair from the perspective of the end of the relationship, likening that love to a sort of poisonous addiction impossible to ignore. It's a breathtakingly beautiful song, and sets Mitchell as one of the rare songwriters able to capture the heady ecstasy of love and the trembling fear of disappointment and loneliness in one broad stroke.

Other songs are more clearly influenced by the break-up itself - the wonderful "River," set to Mitchell's full, rolling piano accompaniment, paints the marvellous image of Mitchell skating away from the heartbreak of having lost someone important to her, and "Blue" is another heart-stopping moment that emerges directly from her relationship with Taylor. Again set to Mitchell's piano (she had used the instrument prior to Blue, but never with such an assured and subtle touch - here the piano ballads actually stand out more than her guitar-based songs), it's a cryptic song that could be about any number of issues related to depression and drug dependency, but feels like an allusion to Taylor's heroin addiction and her desperate efforts to help him rise above it and not to lose the person she loves to something so hopeless. The other ballad that really grasps the listener's attention is "Little Green," a much older song that has nothing to do with Taylor and actually dates from the very early days of her songwriting career. At the release of Blue, "Little Green" was dismissed as an oddity, its story nothing but a cryptic mystery. It was only when Mitchell later confessed that she had had a child in the late 60s that she had had to put up for adoption due to her inability to raise it herself that the song suddenly took on whole new reserves of meaning - "Little Green" herself was Mitchell's pseudonym for the child she gave away and read in the context of its true meaning, the song becomes a thing of real beauty. It's made all the more poignant with the knowledge that this was a song she had hung onto for four years, refusing to allow herself to be honest and open enough to record it until her break-up with Taylor prompted her to look into herself and air her own demons. It's one of her most tender and raw and honest moments, and the first Joni Mitchell song I really fell in love with as a child.

Even on such a bleak and heartbroken record, though, there are moments of lightness and of joy. Both "California" and "Carey" are more upbeat, hopeful songs in the mould of "Chelsea Morning" from Clouds or the wonderful "Conversation" from Ladies Of The Canyon. True, both of them only achieve their sunny disposition by virtue of a yearning for somewhere warmer and better, or nostalgically reminiscing about the joys of Mitchell's travels in Africa, but amid such cold and bleak surroundings, those two songs really shine out as the only beacons of relative optimism and comfort. Vocally, Mitchell is on incredible form, ranging from the hushed intimacy and fragility of "Blue" to the cheerful bounciness of "This Flight Tonight" without ever struggling to convince. Her array of sidemen, meanwhile, are tastefully relegated to the background to allow Joni herself, the undisputed star of the show, to shine. It's only really on the likes of "This Flight Tonight" that any of them really get their own moment to demonstrate anything, and the rest of the time things are rightly grounded in the glacial beauty of Joni herself at her guitar and piano. It's not always an easy ride and it tugs the listener through their fair share of heartbreak and confession and weakness, but it's one of the most majestic creations in music history. It was with Blue that Joni Mitchell truly earned her stripes as the Queen of Folk Rock.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Joni Mitchell.

1. All I Want

2. My Old Man

3. Little Green

4. Carey

5. Blue

6. California

7. This Flight Tonight

8. River

9. A Case Of You

10. The Last Time I Saw Richard

Jethro Tull - Aqualung

Released - March 1971

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Ian Anderson & Terry Ellis

Selected Personnel - Ian Anderson (Vocals/Guitar/Flute); Martin Barre (Guitar); John Evan (Piano/Organ/Mellotron); Jeffrey Hammond (Bass); Clive Bunker (Drums/Percussion); David Palmer (Orchestral Arrangements)

Standout Track - Locomotive Breath

After achieving cult acclaim and vaguely positive critical notice with their first three albums (including 1970's Benefit, a decent but unremarkable album that hasn't made it onto my list on account of its lack of anything really special to make it stand out in the band's discography), Jethro Tull's next step was to be perhaps the most definitive of their career. Certainly, it resulted in what is perhaps their masterwork and is certainly their most popular and immortal album, but the release of Aqualung was also ultimately something of an albatross that would blight them for the rest of their career. While up until Aqualung Tull had flirted with progressive ideas - jazzy reworkings of classical music in "Bouree" from Stand Up, for instance - the band had largely carved out an identity as a blues and folk rock band. But their new album was heralded by many, contrary to the intentions of bandleader Ian Anderson, as a progressive concept album. While the ingredients are certainly there - the first half of the album features several character sketches of destitute figures on the fringes of society, such as the tramp Aqualung and the young prostitute Cross-Eyed Mary, while the second half features several songs ("My God," "Hymn 43" and "Wind-Up") that are attacks on the idea of organised religion versus informal spirituality - ultimately Aqualung is just a brilliant rock record with recurring lyrical themes as opposed to a full-blown concept album. Its reception as a prog album prompted Anderson to riposte with a tongue-in-cheek piss-take of the prog rock genre the following year with the masterful Thick As A Brick, and thereafter Tull would forever be labeled one of the major prog bands. While their music has always had hallmarks of prog, they have always been closer to blues rock, folk rock and hard rock than the true prog of, say, Yes or Pink Floyd and, as the seventies wore on and prog fell increasingly out of favour with the masses, it meant that the great music Tull were making found it increasingly difficult to reach the mainstream audience it once did.

So Aqualung is a major turning point for the band - it marks their storming into the mainstream and becoming a major arena act, but would also ultimately be a rod they built for their own backs in establishing a reputation for them that it would be difficult for them to shake off as the years went by. Mind you, any band who succeeded in making an album even one tenth as good as Aqualung would probably be very happy to accept the punishment of never really being able to top it. This is, pure and simply, one of the very finest rock records of all time, end of. The mood and style and dynamic is the same as Tull had come to finesse over the last few years, with the sound principally built around the folksy acoustic guitar, histrionic flute and gentle cooing of frontman Anderson and the hard, raw edge of Martin Barre's electric guitar. Newcomer John Evan (who overdubbed a few keyboard parts on Benefit but joins here as a full-time band member) even gets a few moments to shine and to pull focus away from the main lynchpin of Anderson and Barre, most notably on the extended piano introduction to the brilliant "Locomotive Breath." What has really been pushed into the stratosphere since their previous album is the songwriting itself. There's more or less nothing here that doesn't grab you by the scruff of the neck and demand your attention. Even the quiet acoustic pieces are totally arresting in their near-perfect execution. "Cheap Day Return," "Wond'ring Aloud" and "Slipstream" form a mini-suite of sorts, each one being a gentle, brief acoustic bridge between two longer setpiece songs, and each one is a brilliantly realised snippet of brilliant folk music in and of itself.

But the songs that those three little interludes weave between are among the best of Tull's career. First there's the instant classic of the title track, with its iconic dirty guitar riff later evolving into the finest solo Barre ever contributed to the band's output. It's followed immediately by the similarly riff-heavy "Cross-Eyed Mary," where Barre exchanges guitar licks with Anderson's breathless flute trills. "Mother Goose" is the first half's other classic, another piece of sunny acoustic folk in the vein of Stand Up's "Fat Man" or another of their earlier more folk-oriented songs. The album's second half ups the ante even more - "My God" is a true masterpiece, slowly expanding from Anderson's quiet intro into a monstrous beast via Barre's brutal guitar, and eventually winding up with by far the finest display of Anderson's virtuoso flute talent of the band's career. "Wind-Up" is another classic mining the same religious themes as "My God" and demonstrating again Barre's newfound talent for churning out spectacular arena-style hard rock riffs in its frenetic crescendo. But the album's finest moment comes with "Locomotive Breath," perhaps the greatest song of Tull's career. Again driven by Barre's iconic riffing, it also boasts another of Anderson's greatest flute solos and that aforementioned bluesy piano intro from Evan and is pure and simply one of the coolest-sounding rock songs ever recorded.

It's very rare indeed to find an album that contains absolutely no down-time, but Aqualung is one of that rare breed - there is not a single song that outstays its welcome, not a single moment where the listener hopes things will hurry along to the next great moment. Every moment is as captivating as the next, whether it's a quiet acoustic bridge or a heavy guitar riff. The album was rapturously received and guaranteed Tull a certain level of stardom for the next few years, even if it did begin to see the band pigeonholed in with a whole circle of artists they didn't necessarily see themselves in league with. Perhaps if Anderson could have foreseen just how much the rise of punk in the late 70s spelt the demise of most great prog bands, he might have shied away from the genre rather than whole-heartedly embraced it (albeit with his tongue firmly in his cheek), and perhaps Tull could then have been granted a more long-lasting immersion in the musical mainstream than they ultimately achieved. Still, that would have denied us dyed-in-the-wool prog fans of one of the genre's truly great albums in Thick As A Brick, and in many ways being a bizarre, unfashionable oddity is a status that suits the odd charisma of Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull rather well. Perhaps if they'd spent whole decades at the forefront of fashion and trend they wouldn't be anywhere near as engaging or charming. Still, Aqualung is their moment in the sun and they deserve every second of it - it's one of those albums that I would insist on literally everybody listening to at least once.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Ian Anderson except where noted.

1. Aqualung (Ian Anderson & Jennie Anderson)

2. Cross-Eyed Mary

3. Cheap Day Return

4. Mother Goose

5. Wond'ring Aloud

6. Up To Me

7. My God

8. Hymn 43

9. Slipstream

10. Locomotive Breath

11. Wind-Up