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Rating:
Imagine a parabola, a large and high parabola; now, focus on its apex, you have just listened to "Welcome Back My Friends," the monumental live album that immortalized 5 years of extraordinary music by one of the most thrilling and talented bands in the prog scene.
Four albums, each more beautiful than the last, gathered into a unique and timeless experience.
And after that?
Indeed, ideas were scarce, but the desire to create wasn't lacking. However, as we know, the two things do not often go hand in hand, and from here Works 1 and 2 are born.
The second volume, in particular, is the fitting example of a good force of will suffocating in the lack of creative insights that characterized the previous work.
The main symptom is the heterogeneity of the pieces; a logical or conceptual thread does not exist, and that's how you go from honky-tonk melodies to slow and warm ballads accompanied by Lake's seductive voice. Semijazz episodes contaminated by piano improvisations contrast with some typically Emersonian pieces characterized by small, scratchy, and excited solos.
In short, the three found themselves in the studio with notes, fragments of old pieces, and rearrangements that, in fact, added nothing new to what had already been said, except for some brief boldness in very disparate musical fields, as mentioned above, from honky-tonk sound to slightly boisterous jazz.
So we are at the point subsequent to the apex of the parabola, from here on a slow and inexorable descent, but it is still a respectable parabola!
Tracklist
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