GAROLOU

With the name change Lougarou to Garolou, the group also changed of personnel as Antoniak and Naylor got replaced by more French-sounding Guay and Beaudouin. With a very Republican artwork, something tells me that Garolou now that it was adopted as a Quebecois band, they tried for the French market, and let's face it this album was good enough to crack the market if it had its chance. Musically the album takes over from the progressive folk rock that mixed so well acoustic and electric folk of the debut album and develops it to a mainly progressive rock where folk influences still dominates.

Opening on the electric piano introduction of Aux Illinois, Garolou almost sounds like Focus with added vocals until the Tull-guitar enters and gives it a vigorous shake. Complainte is one of those pure prog rock tracks, where the heavy synth layers give the track a very modern flavour, although the texts are about the French revolution. The following Depart returns to trad folk, depicting southbound immigration from the great whit north. This track featu-ures some violin from another Lalonde, Robert, this time. Interesting but predictable. Habillé En Plumes (dressed in feathers) is really in the realm of Tull's Songs From The Wood, except that it lets its middle section to keyboards, before letting the guitars a short escape, before returning to the verse and chorus. Then comes the ultra-standard Alouette to close up.

The flipside is a bit of a surprise at first, returning with the ultra-cliché Victoria, so unarranged that it ruins the album's cohesiveness, but since the following Bonaparte jig, where the Quebecois settle their count for abandoning them (by selling Louisiana to the Americans for his European campaigns)??Wing-Tra-La is more trad folk, this time close to Malicorne or la Bamboche. But clearly the album was waiting for the closing Germaine and its 10-mins, which starts as a merry song slowly building up to a furious Tull track in its middle section. The track resumes la bit then seems to die, before a series of dramatic bursts bring on a repetitive bur crescedoing synth finale

This second album is probably the one progheads will prefer, and it's easy to see why, despite the middle of the album's folk's folk heart. While I don't consider any of Garolou's album essential, the first three all have arguments and picking this album up, you shouldn't have any trouble enjoying an album like this..

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