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Rating: The album in question is, in the extensive discography of Kansas, the furthest from their typical sound.
This is due to the absence of the electric violin, a usual reference point in their music, but not only that: the producer of the work is the prestigious Bob Ezrin, a mind fully matured in the Pink Floyd school, thus capable of instilling conceptuality, depth, lyricism, direction, authority, and absolute timbral balance to the music under his responsibility. "In The Spirit Of Kings" is therefore, thanks especially to him, the most ambitious, best produced, best played, best sung work in Kansas's vast discography. It's no coincidence that it is a concept album, with penetrating lyrics, suggestive messages, particular charm. It's a shame that it was a bit of a flop at the time, selling very little. Perhaps it came out at the wrong moment: the late eighties, with Van Halen's and Guns & Roses's arena rock being fashionable, and still to come the powerful and virtuosic progressive of Dream Theater and followers (who owe Kansas quite a bit). And if for the second and last time in Kansas’s discography, the violin is missing (the previous album "Power" was also made without Robby Steinhard's bowing), it hardly matters, as this allows more space for the evolutions of the virtuoso Steve Morse, in his second and last appearance with the group, a phenomenal guitarist given how many qualities he manages to summarize, among which the disarming versatility not being the least, which allows him to perfectly fit into the group's mechanisms, judiciously dousing his overwhelming soloing and gladly subjecting himself to the constraints imposed both by the intrinsic style of the group and by that of the producer, who intends to create complete and balanced songs rather than virtuosic instrumental jam sessions.
The concept at the base of the album, which is the story of a ghost town and the memories of those who lived there and are now gone (in body, but not in spirit), thus assumes a central and constant role, breaking in immediately with the piano ballad prelude "Ghosts", thanks to the heartfelt tone of the great singer Steve Walsh, to the powerful and reverberated sounds of his piano that announce an intense and touching music album. The track proceeds linearly with almost only voice and piano, until it crashes into Morse's staggering solo, the first demonstration of the absolute strength of this musician, able to dive perfectly into intense and baroque atmospheres and indeed emphasize them even more, despite coming from much lighter and sunnier experiences (his fusion group Dixie Dregs). The masterpiece of the album is titled "Rainmaker," a beastly tour de force for Walsh's voice, who strains to recount the story of this rainmaker, the primary architect of the tragedy that befell this village. Steve Morse then adds the finishing touch with a tense and vibrant solo that leads the song to the grand finale, filled with gospel choirs surrounding a frenzied Walsh. Dramatic and epic too is the concluding "The Bell Of St.James," but the album also offers much more straightforward passages, like the pure AOR of "Stand Beside Me" and the hard rock of "House On Fire," embellished by a heart-attack-inducing back-and-forth between the two guitarists of the group, the usual monstrous Morse and the much more conventional Rich Williams, the latter distinguishable among all his colleagues not for any particular instrumental merit, but rather for the black pirate patch that covers his right eye, injured in an accident at a very young age.
What else to say? In my opinion, this album is among the top five favorites in the fifteen or so released so far under the Kansas name. Its concept structure and its rich, deep, and balanced sound prompt a periodic re-listening from start to finish, lyrics in hand, as is appropriate with beautifully conceptual and well-played works such as "The Wall" by Floyd (co-produced by Ezrin) or "Metropolis Part Two" by Dream Theater.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Ghosts (04:14)
There's tombstone in a snowy field
Close by an old ghost town
The epitaph's been weather-blown away
There's a belltower where petitions peeled
It's been half torn down
But it must have softened every soul that came to pray
There's a schoolhouse full of broken glass
And wounded walls
The rusty swings like derelicts sleeping in the weeds
There's a picture-graduation class
Staring down deserted halls
"THE HOPE OF 44" is what it reads
It's just as if some restless wind blew their dreams away far away
It's just as if those dreams had never been but oh-
I feel their ghosts around me now- I hear them say
They've come back home to dream those dreams again
06 Once in a Lifetime (04:15)
If only it was raining out tonight
Reflections on the sidewalks would take me back in time
You told me when I left you standing there
Someday I'd be sorry
Well that day is here
I was wrong, oh so wrong
I should have known
That you were the one
Now I know a love like yours only comes along
Once in a lifetime
Once in your life you'll find
The kind of love that never ends
The kind I want back again
You were trying
I could see it in your eyes
As I held a one way fare
To some false paradise
I was dying to spread my restless wings
Now just to see your face again
I'd do anything
I was wrong, oh so wrong
A dreamer in a small town can survive
Now I know it's love like yours
That keep these dreams alive
Once in a lifetime
Once in your life you'll find
The kind of love that never ends
The kind I want back again
So let the rain fall down
Take me back oh take me back
Don't let me down
Let the rain fall down
It's such a lonely sound
Don't let me down
Once in a lifetime
Once in your life you'll find
The kind of love that never ends
The kind I want back again
07 Stand Beside Me (03:31)
I can feel someone here
In the air tonight
Waiting alone inside for survival
Cruising this place
Like flesh on a neon sign
Brighten up my life tonight
Before the candle flickers
Stand beside me
I will never let you fall
Stand beside me
I'll come whenever you call
I will take it to the wall
I had a life out here
Like a rumble fish
Waiting to drown like all of my rivals
Hiding in rooms so hot
To the human touch
Choose your poison if you can
Take this heart of mine and...
Stand beside me
I will never let you fall
Stand beside me
I'll come whenever you call
I will take it to the wall
09 The Preacher (04:18)
Gather round the preacherman gather round here
If you're waiting for the word that'll make it all clear
When you look in the sky you can see what he sees
There's a fire in the Belt of Hercules
Well the man in the collar says come to the fold
Bible in his hand tassle of gold
Says heaven could be locked but he's got a set of keys
They fit the buckle in the belt of Hercules
We all gotta come to the light together
Put your dreams in your pocket boy
We all gotta come to the light together
Follow me
The preacherman's climbing up above a timberline
Bible in his hand praying for a sign
Says "I'm tired of the devil - I'm down on my knees!"
"I'll fight the battle for the belt of Hercules"
We all gotta come to the light together
Put your dreams in your pocket boy
We all gotta come to the light together
Follow me
10 Rainmaker (06:44)
Have you ever seen a miracle - you couldn't doubt or imitate
What's it really worth to you to shake the holy hand of fate
Well I did what I could to make ends meet
Been a gunrunner and a medicine man
In a Kansas town I was a rainmaker - there the hand of fate got out of hand
Rainmaker Rainmaker save this one horse town
Rainmaker pray to heaven
From the Flint Hills the land was cracked and dried
Thirsty streets in misery
I took the sign down that said medicine man
Put one up that said rainmaker - that was me
So the townspeople gave me money up front
To light a fire - pray, and dance around
Tell them it'd rain so they'd all go to bed
And I'd make my break clean out of town
But I started this dance and a storm kicked up
The sky went black from coast to coast
It was too late to stop - it was to late to pray
I had summoned down the Holy Ghost
Oh the searing wind and the clouds of dust
And hell came raining down
What came out of me and the powers that be
Was the last of that one horse town
12 Bells of Saint James (05:39)
Her letters gave me purpose,
Her letters gave me pride
Armies far across the ocean
Guns and letters by our side
It was someone else's homeland
It was someone else's war
But at the line of the 38th parallel
It was her I fought them for
Her victory garden grew from weeds and from stone
I smelled those flowers in my sleep
The day I left as we were standing alone
She swore to me those dreams would keep
And the bells of St. James were ringing
The bells of St. James were ringing down
Lifting the eyes of those homeward bound
I don't remember when those words changed
Like Kansas summer turns to fall
But she quit talking 'bout the future
Never mentioned dreams at all
I don't blame my enemies and I don't blame my wife
For love fires that fleeted long ago
But when she wrote me about this change in her life
There was just one thing I had to know
Are the bells of St. James still ringing
The bells of St. James still ringing down
Lifting the eyes of those homeward bound
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