Curved Air
Air Cut

Last June 13th, the audience of the Isle of Wight witnessed the ghostly appearance of Curved Air, reuniting once more after 18 years.

Surprisingly, the three musicians (Sonja Kristina, Darryl Way, and Florian Pilkington-Miksa – alas, the great Francis Monkman was missing) did not appear lackluster at all and instead offered interesting versions of their classics (including a “Back Street Luv Dance Remix” remixed by DJ Elektro Diva) and some unreleased tracks (“Coming Home”, “The Fury”). This is good news for lovers of Progressive and this band in particular, a group that, in fact, never really broke through but created over the years a good number of devoted fans captivated by the elegance + experimentation pair their music has always provided over time.

I took the reunion news as a pretext to talk about this album from 1973 which, although not a masterpiece, is a little gem buried under the layers of time, finally released on CD in 2006. So, to give a bit of history, after the departure of two founding members Way and Monkman, Kristina and bassist Mike Wedgwood (who had already played on the album “Phantasmagoria”) decided to continue by recruiting three young musicians: Eddy Jobson, violin, piano, and synthesizers, Gregory Kirby, guitars, and Jim Russel, drums and percussion. The seventeen-year-old Jobson, in particular, apparently presented himself to the band one evening backstage after a concert, accurately replicating the quite challenging violin score of the track “Vivaldi.”
Perhaps partly because of the low average age of the group, the direction they wanted to take wasn’t clear: while some tracks (“Metamorphosis”, “Elfin Boy”) follow the progressive guidelines, elsewhere (“Purple Speed Queen”, “Easy”, “U.H.F.”, “Two Three Two”) you can feel the will to draw closer to Hard Rock (probably due to Kirby’s guitar style, markedly different from Monkman’s acid/west coast style).

Given this disadvantageous underlying heterogeneity, noteworthy tracks are not lacking. “The purple speed queen” (the single intended to repeat the success of “Back Street Luv”) is, as mentioned, one of the harder tracks, with two supersonic solos by Jobson on synthesizer and Kirby on guitar. The lyrics tell the raw story of a heroin addict. “Elfin Boy” is, after “Melissa”, Kristina’s best Elizabethan ballad, here on acoustic guitar accompanied by Jobson’s trembling organ. “Easy”: another ballad, this time more on the melodramatic side thanks to Kristina's poignant performance (singing alongside Wedgwood). “Metamorphosis”: last but not least, is an admirable composition by the young Jobson. A multifaceted suite that goes (as the title suggests) through various sections: a classical introduction on the grand piano; a part sung by Kristina (“We are the children of the midnight…") on a martial beat followed by a great electric piano solo; a wonderful instrumental section with some of the most beautiful piano passages I have ever heard (at least on a pop-rock record) that preludes the return of the main theme, this time also accompanied by organ and synthesizer. The track surprisingly concludes with a Honky Tonk-style ending (perhaps Jobson's tribute to Keith Emerson’s preferred style?).

So much progressive grace would surely guarantee the album four stars, but the absolute mediocrity of the remaining tracks (except “Armin” benefiting from great work by Jobson on the violin) doesn’t make me go beyond three and a half. Which is not bad anyway for an album that, besides not having thrilled the critics of the time, was a resounding commercial flop, decreeing the end of the group that couldn’t even complete the recordings of a second album (“Lovechild”, released only in 1990).