ALL OVER YOU ... TOO

All over you .. Part 2. This is re-visiting the next period (Girls , Stunts era) and this actually is more interesting than the previous one which had more difficulties honouring the tracks from the first three albums. A reworking of Thlu in this album helped me appreciate the original one better. Oik is actually from the Dunstan album.

The real Kings of Canterbury (nah not Soft Machine) take another trip down memory lane and revisit earlier songs.

From Girls: Hoedown, Cthu thlu, The Dog's at it again From Cunning Stunts: Stuck in a Hole From Bling Dog at St Dunstans: A very smelly, grubby litle oik From Better BY Far: Nightmare

Well I'll happily be in a minority of one with this one: i think this album is absolutely great fun. it's hard not to smile at the exuberance and

Caravan are one of my favourite prog bands (although I've hardly reviewed any of their albums yet). This absolutely the wrong one with which to start. Having said that ....

Very Smelly Grubby Little Oik is a merry upbeat humorous track. Infectious. I've played it at parties, in between modern numbers: it always gets a great reaction. A nice cathcy guitar riff and with Jim Leverton and Richard Coughlan the rhythm is mesmeric. Bobbing Wide is a real mood change, as the band switch to a more sophisticated sound.

The Dog brings us back to the classic Canterbury sound. Pye Hastings' charactersitic restrained understated vocal is the antithesis of the flash front man. Doug Boyle really adds dome spice to this track for the heavier proggers but this is and remains firmly within the Canterbury Scene.

I think the stand out factor about this album is the new dynamic that Doug Boyle brings to the equation. It has been a revelation to me. hear it in this album and watch the DVDs: incredible - it just really works. I suppose it helps that he has obviously had a vulcan mind meld with Geoffrey Richardson. Here you have a genuinely grat prog band with a bona fide lead guitarist in a combination that is greater than the sum of its parts (unlike the awesome Trevor Rabin & Yes partnership).

Caravan's "All Over You...Too" is the second reunited return to their beloved songs from the early 70s. The guitar work is heavier and more up to date but the same Caravan spirit is here in all the tracks, I adore this version of 'Cthlu Thlu' which is much darker than the original and has an incredible time sig change and killer riff. The nasty laugh at the end augments the portentous impending doomy atmosphere.

There are some incredible moments on this album. Hoedown and Very smelly grubby little oik sound terrific with the heavier guitars, Hastings vocals are fabulous. The dog the dog he's at it again is an excellent version of the classic. Stuck in a hole has a great lead break and very powerful guitar work. Doug Boyle is a key factor to the heavier sound and it is a welcome change darkening the music that is usually lighter and giving it a razor's edge to make these versions some of the best the band have played, 'Cthlu Thlu' is masterful and one of the best Caravan songs.

Nightmare is a well executed throwback to the classic version and it ends with a reprise of Bobbing wide (Reprise). I was surprised and delighted at the dynamic enthusiasm and vibrant energy of the band even in their twilight years. They still inject humour and potent instrumental breaks in the songs making them one of the genuine survivors of the 70s Canterbury prog movement.

Caravan's four studio albums of the 1990s are an odd bunch, not least because they only recorded one album of all- original material in the decade (The Battle of Hastings). Cool Water consisted of demos from the late 1970s with some extra tracks tacked-on from a studio session, and then there's All Over You, which consisted of rerecorded material from their classic albums given radical rearrangements to give them a more modern sound.

Then there's All Over You... Too, recorded in mid-1999, which is the sequel to All Over You. It's another set of updated songs, and is recorded by essentially the same lineup - with the addition of Jim Leverton on bass (who'd sat out the All Over You sessions despite having joined the band for Battle of Hastings) and Doug Boyle on guitar (offering an extra twist similar to those he contributed on the Canterbury Comes To London live album), and with a guest spot from Hugh Hopper of Soft Machine on one track.

This feels like a more successful take on the same general experiment that All Over You was trying. It helps that Caravan aren't necessarily messing with their most beloved material here. That's not to say they don't touch any of their sacred cows - some of the tracks here (like the cuts from For Girls Who Grow Plump In the Night) are highly-regarded Caravan tracks which are undeniably in the top tier of their catalogue.

At the same time, they're more willing this time around to dip into material which perhaps isn't so well-remembered - many consider Caravan to have been on the wane a little on Blind Dog At St. Dunstans' and at a low ebb on Better By Far, but they're happy to dip into those albums for that material, and arguably Nightmare (from Better By Far) the sections of the Grubby Little Oik suite (from Blind Dog) they rework here have never sounded better - and it's less of a shock to hear the experiment because even if you are a Caravan fan you probably don't regard the original versions with quite as much fondness as, say, any of the material on In the Land of Grey and Pink.

That said, even the reworkings of truly first-class Caravan classics here are somewhat interesting, the band doing a decent job of casting their classic material in a more modern form which suggests that their perceived unfashionability in the 1990s may well have been one of the great musical injustices.

If you only care for Caravan as a 1970s classic prog act and have no desire to hear that material played in a way which substantially differs from the original albums, you won't like this album regardless of how well-executed it is. If, on the other hand, you're open to a different take on familiar and not-so-familiar Caravan songs, it's worth a punt.