Penk's Prog Odyssey: Yes - Close to the Edge

[Quaco]

Unless they suggest Camel who are rubbish.

It's true. I have started to come around to them slightly by realizing they are just MOR mellow guitar solos with prog overtones, not a real band with real songs and stuff.

[kath]

i loved the whole write-up, in point and description, but the close is my fave:

It's music which is easily suggestive of a time and place: it sounds like it could have been recorded in the back room of an antiquarian bookshop, or in a wizard's pantry, or inside an old oak tree. Isn't that what you want from a prog album?

well, yes, often that is precisely what i want.

[C]

Carvan's Grey & Pink is a superb album

The one before is indeed magnificent

For Girls That Grow Plump is also awesome

They were somewhat erratic

Camel are an amazing band to and the first two albums are to die for.

That said, you either like it or you don't.

Simple

I'd never fight anybody over it








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[zoomboogity]

Of the four songs on side one of In The Land Of Grey And Pink, three are sung by Richard Sinclair. This is one of them, from Beat Club 1971.

[Moleskin]

I think Quaco is right about Camel. At their best they are pleasant.

[C]

Listen again to Mirage and Moonmadness my dear friend

Yes, listen again to Mirage and Moonmadness








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[trans-chigley express]

I think Quaco is right about Camel. At their best they are pleasant.

Camel are all about Snow Goose for me which I think is magnificent even with all the MOR mellow guitar solos. The albums before and the one after are pleasant.

[trans-chigley express]

Carvan's Grey & Pink is a superb album

The one before is indeed magnificent

For Girls That Grow Plump is also awesome

They were somewhat erratic

I agree with that. Those three albums are their purple patch. It was downhill after.

[algroth]

Kinda late on this one... I can't really comment much on In the Land of Grey and Pink because I haven't heard it in years and don't really recall much of it. At the time I was investigating Caravan I enjoyed it but found it a tad too polite. I think I'd enjoy it more now but I really have to give it another spin.

You heard Hatfield and the North already, Penk? They kinda exhibit a similar style.

[Penk!]

Foreigners, eh?

A lot of them don't get rock music. Rock music seems to be built on something peculiar to Anglophone culture.

Sure, the French did some nifty pop - they can do anything if they put on some nice clothes and stick their tongues in their cheeks - and there were a few people in the colder regions of Europe who aped the Brits and Yanks well. The Germans are good at everything. Oh, and Latin America just gets music.

But rock in the Mediterranean? In Italy, especially? Well, there's Pavarotti showing up on 'Miss Sarajevo'. Some Eurovision balladeers in tight leather trousers: men with curly hair and five-o-clock shadows doing their best Celine Dion.

Odd, then, that the most prominent non-English-speaking prog outfit are Italians (discounting the Kosmische lot, who are only prog because the prog boys want to claim some secondhand coolness). But then again, given prog's tendency to try for classical transcendency, maybe the Italians would have something to offer? This is the land of Verdi, Puccini and Rossini, of Monteverdi and Vivaldi. If anyone knows how to play an archlute, it's them.

So my interest was piqued enough to give a whirl to this one, which regularly turns up in "best prog album ever" lists at about number 18 and even made BCB's own Prog Canon with about 90% of votes in support.

It's a prog album.

They have some classical touches. They have some jazz touches. They have some '70s rock touches. They have some bad production on the rhythm section. They definitely know their way around a nice melody and the classical and jazz elements are by far the most convincing, but they doom themselves by progging out.

The opening track, 'Appena Un Pò', is a good example. It starts with a very nice ambient synth wave, then suddenly I'm listening to William Byrd or something. It's very nice, but I'm just wondering why I'm listening to some Italian proggers imitate the real thing. And then, and then, the chunky rock starts. They quite literally carry on playing their frilly madrigal but put a blobby '70s bass and lumpen drums underneath it. This is why prog gets a bad rap. Why do that?

Other tracks are similarly confusing. Am I to appreciate the delicate melodies in 'Il Banchetto', or roll my eyes at the misguided synth tweaking? Or just skip the track when they start foolishly bleeping away in the middle of it? OK, props to them for composing the soundtrack to a lesser Super Mario sequel twenty years before the fact, but it sounds crap.

There is little De Niro-faced widdling here, but what there is is a lack of focus disguised as exploration and experimentation. No quibbles with either activity: but moderation is key. Here, they desperately throw everything they have into the record and never give themselves time to sit down, think about what their strengths are, and really explore the things they are good at.

It's frustrating because there are some really pretty passages here. Some of the flautism and twittering are a bit on the kitschy side, but they have some lovely melodies and atmospheres. They just suffer from the prog curse, that failure to resist doing too much, venturing into the unnecessary and the unappealing too often. The classical-style passages are all well and good, but a bit pointless: other people did this, and did it better, 150 years earlier. If they concentrated on the lightly jazzy, ambient passages - mellotron ahoy! - this would be a delightful record. As it is, it's an interesting one but not one I will be returning to.

[Penk!]

You heard Hatfield and the North already, Penk? They kinda exhibit a similar style.

They are on my list of things to check out (not that I am rushing through the prog section of that list!), though I got the impression they're a bit like Caravan without the songwriting skillz...

[Quaco]

Nice write up of PFM. I like the melodies better than you seem to, and the sounds (of the synthesizers, Mellotrons, etc.) work for me. I think they're a little different, moodier, than your typical "trying to impress" prog instrumentation.

I did mostly agree with your assessments. The only problem was that you didn't hate them enough, so your review was a bit too even-handed. Hoping for some bile!

[Penk!]

I think they're a little different, moodier, than your typical "trying to impress" prog instrumentation.

Yes, I certainly didn't think they were trying to show how good they were at playing the instruments, more playing with different combinations of sounds and styles. My reservations were more about an apparent failure to recognise what worked and what didn't.

Hoping for some bile!

I haven't dared listen to anything I expect to hate recently. I'm actually trying to find things I might like!

[algroth]

You heard Hatfield and the North already, Penk? They kinda exhibit a similar style.

They are on my list of things to check out (not that I am rushing through the prog section of that list!), though I got the impression they're a bit like Caravan without the songwriting skillz...

I think that isn't very accurate at all about them, really. I do think that they give in to jams and noodly passages more than Caravan but their actual songs as well as several of these passages are damn good from a songwriting standpoint. Example:



I do prefer their debut over Rotters Club overall though. I'll get onto PFM later but it's actually one of my least favorite Italian prog bands.

[Neil Jung]

As a long time fan of the genre, I rate PFMs Per Un Amico very highly indeed. I love all of it. I'm glad you liked at least some of it.

As for Hatfield I don't see much similarity between them and Caravan, except that they share a bass player / vocalist. They're nothing like mid or late period Caravan, more like National Health, but not as good.

[Hightea]

love Per un amico and exactly what you pick on is its strongest for me. PFM does an exceptional job of mixing jazz, classical and rock into one album. Exactly what I want and wish more prog bands took this approach instead on the solos approach. Yes there are some slow passages but as a whole this album is smooth and completely works.

Funny you like Caravan although Caravan always did have pieces of music that are more approachable to the common music fan. I can't see this carry on to Hatfield or National Health two bands that took it a step or two farther into the prog realm.

[algroth]

As a long time fan of the genre, I rate PFMs Per Un Amico very highly indeed. I love all of it. I'm glad you liked at least some of it.

As for Hatfield I don't see much similarity between them and Caravan, except that they share a bass player / vocalist. They're nothing like mid or late period Caravan, more like National Health, but not as good.

On the other hand, I don't think they sound at all like National Health. I think National Health had a much harder and more abrasive edge to their music that often approached them to RIO and avant-prog acts instead. To the best of my memory there's not a single NH track that tries anything near the poppiness of "Share It" or "Let's Eat (Real Soon)". Even in their jammier moments Hatfield still retain a mellow jazziness that is what most reminds of Caravan in their pre-For Girls period. Having said this, yes, I also prefer National Health, but for me it's a pretty different beast and I don't think it speaks ill of Hatfield either.

[Penk!]

I am bumping this thread in order to do a new review. This post to make sure it doesn't end up right at the bottom of the page!

[Penk!]

I miscounted. Oops

[Penk!]

When I started this thread, my noble - yes, noble, dammit! - intention was to explore fully the depths and - presumed, unevidenced - peaks of prog rock. To this end, I would not dismiss any group on the basis of one album, and would commit to listening to at least two by all the agreed-upon giants of the genre (both Gentle and brutal [yes I mean you, Peter fucking Hamill]).

Having listened to one album by Genesis and one by Van der Graaf Generator, however, I realised that I had made a terrible mistake and that surely there were better things I could do with my life than listen to a man angrily shouting about murderous fish. Join a Buddhist monastery. Write The Great Comorian Novel. Learn to juggle piranha. Dedicate myself to becoming one of those newfangled "transhumans" with a bionic eye and a robot hand and Christ knows what in my pants. Figure out what kind of blunt weapon would do the most damage to my exposed face. You know.

But I have made a promise, and I am not the kind of man to go back on his word, especially not when that word has been written in an easily-edited post in a thread about prog rock on an irrelevant message board frequented by about 80 people.

So I'll go back where I started, to perhaps the biggest and most popular of the prog crowd, Yes, with what many people regard as their finest work - and interestingly enough the one with the least ostentatious cover art.

It starts off with what sounds like Yes trying to do a jazz-funk workout.

Did nobody tell them they shouldn't do a jazz-funk workout?

Why wasn't there somebody there saying to them "stop it"? Many countries in the developed world still struggle with high unemployment, but this could be solved if every record studio and producer in the land employed someone whose job it was to tell bands when to stop it.

They break off the jazz-funking in order to go "aaah", then they get back to jazz-funking.

But hey, about three minutes in, we get to the meat of it. And - and I'm going to get my criticisms in and say that the bass is still a little bit too pointy and overactive, and there are concerns about the overall production, and there is some kind of weird sitar-keyboard effect under the verse that sounds like prancing multicoloured deer, which is not an image I really want from my epic rock thanks all the same - what strikes me about this is that compared to other prog behemoths, Yes could write fucking tunes. Their music is all over the place, but I actually really like Jon Anderson's voice and he knows how to wield it.

And the chorus is lovely.

I should point out at this stage that this review is based on Steven Wilson's remix of the record. I own, and have on many occasions listened to, a copy of the record which was not remixed by Steven Wilson.

I much prefer the version that was not remixed by Steven Wilson.

Whatever Steven Wilson has done while remixing the record - I do not presume to know, as I do not myself regularly remix prog rock records and therefore assume Steven Wilson knows a lot more than I do about pressing buttons and twiddling knobs and looking at slidey things on computer screens, so it's not my place to judge his skills or knowledge really, but that's what I'm doing, I suppose - I do not like it. He seems to have foregrounded all the proggiest things, all the worst production choices of the original, all the brashest synths and fiddliest bass outbursts. He gives it all this kind of bright, sharp sheen, and he doesn't seem to realise that prog was already overdone: he has to overdo it some more. Damn his eyes. And everything they stand for while I'm at it.

Anyhow, when we get to the ambient breakdown it's all quite lovely. I'm in an elfin glen. Water is dripping and it sparkles as it does so. Everything is shrouded in some kind of beautiful mist, which I'm sure if I touch it will give me horrendous unwished-for visions of futures that may never and should never be. I'm progging out! Let's do it!

The last few minutes are something of a recap of everything that was good and bad about the first dozen minutes, with the jazz-funk nightmare returning (and topped off by dizzyingly widdly organ) but it has the most satisfying climax in all of prog (all of prog that I know, which isn't a lot, but I am pretty damn sure I know better than people who listen to a lot of prog. I've heard the kind of shite they listen to). It's anthemic and stirring, and it's a tremendous example of a band putting build, development and awkward time signatures to really effective use: the way they draw out the refrain and keep you waiting for the pay-off is killer. And there's a gorgeous outro, with Wakeman eschewing organ wizardry in favour of a piano lick that I'd be amazed to learn hadn't turned up on a Moby track on a car advert pretty much every time you turned on the bloody TV in the late '90s. It's why I moved abroad, actually.

There are two more songs (suites? opuses? monumental works of boundary-pushing progressive art? Songs.) on the album, and both are similarly fine examples of what prog should have been and how more bands should have married their experimental, epic and virtuoso urges with accessibility and melody.

'And You and I' has stark and memorable acoustic figures, and a pretty strummed section which unfortunately exposes the lack of delicacy in Anderson's vocals a little too much, while the swooping synths that come in are suitably tuneful and the backing foreshadows the cinematic themes of Vangelis; the drums, battling to get started, add to the drama. This is how you create an epic. Not by yelling about lighthouse keepers, Hamill. You knob. Effective tempo changes, drums like fireworks, laser synths, crescendoes and climbing melodies.

The album finishes with 'Siberian Khatru'*, another acknowledged prog classic. It opens with a bluesy riff and then we're plunged into another fusion thing, but it just about works. There's a feel of tension and release in there, and the oddly off-key riff does stick. The verse part, likewise, would be laughable in its bouncy riffing, if it weren't so damned catchy. Again, it's their feel for sheer tunefulness that saves them, as well as a lovely soft-focus break. This is, though, the most openly proggy number here - baroque-era keyboard instrument alert! - and, I must admit, the least successful. The calmer passages are fine, but the hyperactive wigging out elsewhere is a bit too much; they have, perhaps, earned their nine minutes of noodly release after being on best behaviour for the first half-hour of the album.

Which, overall, is a real success. Like the King Crimson album I reviewed upthread, I knew it beforehand, knew I liked it beforehand, but it's an example of the good that can come from this thread: I discovered it when the couple of songs I liked on Fragile got me to sift through other bits of the Yes catalogue. I don't like everything that happens on here, but I can appreciate the intent of much of it and there are moments that make sitting through the less successful explorations worth it. A question to prog fans: do you tend to like unconditionally everything that goes on on a classic album like this, or do you, like the rest of us, have, let's say, concerns about the jazz-funk jams?

I'll return to this thread in due course. Although most likely not to Van der Graaf Generator. They can fuck off.



*There is some debate, I understand, about what exactly a "khatru" is. I'd like to open up the floor for guesses.