Kansas
Point Of Know Return

THE REVIEW

In '77 everyone was busy following those four silly chords later called punk while there was a band that was damn well rocking with a violin and a keyboard.

Kansas were already in vogue at the time for the hit-bomb "Carry On Wayward Son", when suddenly in 1977 "Point Of Know Return" began to appear in record stores. This sublime album represents one of the cornerstones of 70s rock, with ten tracks marking one of the last worthy events of Progressive ROCK, and I write in capital letters ROCK because subsequently Prog Metal will be born. But anyway, let's move on to the track descriptions.

The title track immediately presents itself as a beautiful piece alternating sweet parts with more unleashed ones like the typically Progressive keyboard-driven chorus. Particularly beautiful is the part accompanied by strings that then flows into the powerful chorus. The second track Paradox is definitely less engaging, but not ugly for this reason, it’s a frenetic rock stopped by some instrumental sections and accompanied by a nice violin. The next "The Spider" is nothing more than an instrumental that connects to the famous "Portrait (He Knew)", the latter is a really beautiful track with a strong blues influence and a magnificent guitar solo that goes wild towards the end; we can say that it is one of the highest points ever reached by the American band. "Closet Chronicles" is a semi-ballad that seems boring from the start to the middle of the song when it is interrupted by a more than sublime instrumental section accompanied by the vibraphone, then the ballad returns and subsequently it erupts again, a piece that in DeBaserian terms I’d rate 4 for the instrumental part. "Lightning's Hand" presents again the bluesy influences of "Portrait" only here the singing is much deeper and hard rock, in this album Kerry Livgren shows us what kind of guitarist he is with amazing and rather long solos like in this track. Would there be words to describe track 7? “Dust In The Wind"... The title already speaks for itself, passion and romance blend in this song with beautiful lyrics, a classic.

“Sparks Of Tempest” is an awfully disco piece, saved only by Livgren's umpteenth superb performance; I would prefer to skip the description of this piece. The penultimate piece "nobody's Home" is a beautiful ballad accompanied by strings that make the song even sweeter and lovelier, this song can boast of a great vocal performance by singer Steve Walsh and the usual Livgren's guitar work. And here we are at the end, "Hopelessly Human" is another wonderful ballad with Livgren’s best solo on this album and the excellent performance of all the other members.

This album marked the end of an era and of a genre like progressive, and, since the honor of closing the golden decade of prog fell to Kansas, they did not disappoint.