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Traffic - Mr. Fantasy CD (album) cover

MR. FANTASY

Traffic

 

Eclectic Prog

3.62 | 210 ratings

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ClemofNazareth
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk Researcher
4 stars Traffic's first album was (and remains) their most eclectic and non-commercial release, combining great songwriting with diverse instrumentation and a blend of psych, folk, Eastern sounds and blues rock that had no parallel at the time, and very few since. The Incredible String Band was also mixing rock, folk and some Eastern influenced music around the same time, but the combination of Jim Capaldi's wild percussion, Chris Woods' solid flute work and spacey organ and Dave Mason's multiple talents on sitar, guitar and occasional Mellotron (among other things) offered an unmatched solid platform for young whiz-kid Steve Winwood's engaging vocals and guitar.

Despite the band having three keyboardists this is an album full of acoustic instrumentation and is surprisingly light on keyboards. Woods makes more of a contribution with his flute on tracks like "Dealer" and saxophone on "Coloured Rain", which also includes his organ work and at times sounds more like a Chicago tune than most of the other Traffic on this album and those that followed.

These are shorter songs than a lot of what would follow, which is not surprising considering the popularity of pop-psych at the time and given the connections every member had to the former Spencer Davis Group. By the time the band wound down seven years later the psych influences would be all but gone, replaced by African percussion and more commercial-leaning songwriting along with more mature jazz tinges that are almost non-existent here. In some ways those later albums were even better than this one since the considerable talents of the various members would be much more prevalent, but in 1967 this was pretty impressive stuff and close to being unique.

The U.S. release would have two Dave Mason tracks removed on its initial release ("Utterly Simple" and "Hope I Never Find Me There") since he had made his first exit from the band even before the record's release. The first of these is folksier than anything else on the album, while the second has both folk tendencies and ample use of the type of Eastern instrumentation and Mellotron more favored by Mason than by the rest of the band, although "Paper Sun" (a Capaldi/Winwood song that was not included in the initial UK version of the album) also features heavy use of sitar and tamboura. "Hole in My Shoe" did make the U.S. release and includes some child's spoken words and a heavy pop-psych feel, and this one makes me wonder exactly what it was about Mason's style that put Winwood and Capaldi off to the point where they asked him to leave after his second stint with the band.

The main attraction on this album is the timeless title track, credited to all but Mason yet widely acknowledged to have been mostly penned and arranged by Winwood while the band was ensconced in the Berkshire Downs communal home during the summer of 1967. Producer Jimmy Miller has reported the song was recorded during a memorable late-night session, and the song definitely has a solid, mature feel that isn't heard anywhere else on the record. This is the one I think of most when contemplating what this band could have accomplished had personalities and tensions not brought about their demise far too soon.

This album is a classic, and one that belongs in every serious progressive music lover's collection. The songs are a tad bit uneven and it can be difficult to get a strong sense of what the album was supposed to sound like given the large number of different versions that were released then and since. Still, most of the tracks hold up quite well today, especially "Heaven is in Your Mind", "No Face, No Name, No Number", "Dealer" and of course the title track. Not quite a masterpiece but pretty damn close. Four stars out of five without question and recommended as all but essential.

peace

ClemofNazareth | 4/5 |

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