Queen s/t
Queen - II
I don’t think I’d ever heard these before, they’re somewhat analagous to the first couple of Styx albums this way, two albums recorded on the way to their peak, however, unlike Styx, early Queen still sounds like Queen. The first record mostly popped out to my ears based on the lyrics, which often struck me as fairly religious at times. Queen II, far more mature and thought through, leaves these behind for probably the first album that really demonstrated Freddie Mercury’s vocal prowess and that’s before mentioning Brian May’s guitar playing, which is pretty outstanding here. There’s something just a bit too Broadway about Queen, especially as they added each new album to their canon. The music is epic, highly charged and occasionally a bit foofy, which all makes it a bit hard to get into at first. In fact Queen II may be the band’s most proggy album, although proggy in the same way Tommy might be considered.
Caravan - For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night
My first foray into post-Grey and Pink Caravan scared me half to death, so I’ve been more or less avoiding revisiting that part of their catalog. And about 10 minutes into my revisit, I was reminded why, the twee pop songs that started and continued reminding me of the Man band’s similar efforts (which lit off images in my brain of the two sharing gigs). However, once the longer material became to appear it not only reminded me that Caravan, in some ways, have always been about the dichotomy between the noncynical, post Summer of Love single tracks and the long, windy compositions with solo spots. I’m certainly simplifying things a bit, with one LP and seven tracks, things are mixed up a bit more, but my impression was of an, um, plumper version of the album with some rather outstanding bonus material, somehow elevating my impression of the album. In fact, after that first 10 or 15 minutes, I didn’t remember anything that bother me much. Anyway the album sounded 9ish this time around.
Tangle Edge - In the Presence of Aphrodite
To demonstrate how long Norwegians Tangle Edge have been around, this cassette release came out about 86, or at least it was recorded then. I remember reading about it when Audion used to tout the group in the early 90s, when their discography had about seven items, five of which you’d have to have some connects to find. This is one of those, I don’t remember if it was for radio stations or something else. This is Tangle Edge in power trio mode as they often are, with a strong drummer and bass player available to hammer out constantly changing themes and riffs for the guitar player to work over. The problem with their music, as it often is, is that without a variety of guitar tones and approaches, the music starts to sound a bit samey after the first ten minutes, even though structurally this isn’t the case - if one thing could be said about the group, they explore and do it well. Anyway, with all this said, it has to mentioned that there was much better music to come, with or without other musicians that would be added and removed as the line up changed. Aphrodite, as it is, is probably for fans only.