TARKUS

I always believed it's unfair to use ELP as the example of the most self indulgent, excessive and pompous Prog, people like to blame them for how much mainstream critics and audience hate or ignore our beloved genre, but I tell this people get "Trilogy" and if you find it too complex, go and buy "Saturday Night Fever" because Prog is not for you.

But each time I listen "Tarkus" I feel closer to the people who believe ELP are sometimes excessive, after a soft but good debut and because people expected too much from the first Prog supergroup, they valued more complexity and empty virtuosity over musicality, Palmer and Emerson seem to be in a ciontest trying to prove how fast they are and lake has troubles with some tracks (Something I never expected from him),

Of course if they wanted to be a Prog band they had to do a pompous and overblown epic, better if multi part and better if they created an almost impossible to understand concept, this may work for Genesis because Peter Gabriel is a hell of a lyricist and has an incredible imagination, but that's not the strongest point of Emerson, Lake, Palmer or Sinfield when they recruited him.

The band starts the album with the supposed "Piece de Resistance" the overblown Tarkus, divided in seven parts all created to prove how proficient they are at their respective instruments, the Sci Fi mythological concept is secondary, it's only an excuse, I find no coherence or melodic support, the more complex the better, except for the vocal sections by Greg Lake, pretty forgettable.

They blend Symphonic, Jazzy sections, Crimsonian references and of course lost or organ and drum solos, they proved they are excellent performers but the composition is less than average IMHO, in some moments they seem to regain control but they loose it almost instantly in their desire of being better, louder and more complex than anybody else, goals that they never achieve.

Jeremy Bender is simply a nice saloon tune with a vertical piano, catchy but nothing special.

Bitches Crystal is the point where I use the skip button, no feet or head, they got lost between Pompous Prog and Free Jazz, even Greg who gives coherence to the most bizarre tracks is unable to make this track barely decent, Keith butchers the piano and maybe the highest point is Palmer who remains accurate as always.

The Only Way starts as a good (at last) atheist hymn paradoxically performed using the St. Mark Church Organ. They try to be original and irreverent but the phrase "Why did he lose six million Jews" would be laughable if didn't sounded so racist and disrespectful to the holocaust. What started strong ended being ridiculous.

The Only Way is a relief, very good track, martial, rhythmic, well developed and solid from start to end, a "rara avis" in this album without feet and head. Nothing spectacular either but above the level of the album despite is mostly a long introduction that leads nowhere.

A Time and a Place is another song that doesn't make sense at all, it's so badly done that he band plays highly above the vocal range of Greg Lake, letting us notice that his voice has severe limits, the rest is mostly organ and Moog masturbation with Palmer bombing us with his accurate but worthy of a better album drumming.

Are You Ready Eddy? is only a joke and nothing more, entertaining Rock & Roll just in the way any band from your local pub could have played, the album starts as it begins..weak.

Compared with "Love Beach" or "In the Hot Seat" , "Tarkus" is a masterpiece (well, almost any album wins with this comparison), so I can't rate it with one star, now compared even with the naïve and relatively simple self titled debut, "Tarkus" looses, so I have to go lower than 3 stars.

To be fair, it's an average album which would mean an impossible 2.5 stars rating in our system, so I will have to go with 2 stars, very disappointing, because average for other bands is poor for a supergroup as ELP,

Still I can't understand all the noise and praises I heard about it, but being that everybody seems to enjoy "Tarkus" except me, so i won't dare to say avoid it, only wiill say that for me is one of the weakest ELP albums and I wouldn't buy it again even if somebody steals my CD.