IN THE LAND OF GREY AND PINK

In the Land of Grey and Pink is THE Canterbury Scene album. If you want to know what the genre is all about, then pick this album up, listen to it a few times, and you'll pretty much know. This album is that it combines humor and British silliness with long but interesting sections of excellent jazz fusion instrumentation. The songs aren't too different musically, though they're different as far as approach goes- Golf Girl is a fun, silly song that could have been written by drunks if the musicianship wasn't as good- that doesn't mean it's bad, it means it's a nice little isle of humor in an often way-too-serious genre. Winter Wine is a nice, tender long song, and Love to Love You is almost a Beatles cover- the songwriting style, the lyrics focusing on love, everything here sounds like Caravan saying "hey, let's screw the jazz stuff for three minutes and make a pop song"- and they succeed, making quite an enjoyable one. Next is the title track, which is like a compromise between Golf Girl and Winter Wine. And finally comes the 23-minute epic, Nine Feet Underground, a huge, intriguing mass of instrumentals with occasional vocal parts. However, while I like LOGAP very much, I never really listen to it much anymore, which is, I think, for a reason. It's not too varied, it uses some different ideas, but there's not much originality in the instrumentation. Also, Love to Love You is a bit corny. Though it's a really good album, it's a bit tame, there's really not much that really, REALLY grabs your attention, besides maybe a few parts in Nine Feet Underground. So, I think that it's on the border between four and three, but for being the defining album of a genre, I'll give it four.