SEVEN

The Softs are now down to one original member and three former Nucleus members! Luckily, the four very talented musicians all have a common desire to make Jazz-Rock Fusion.

Side One: 1. "Nettle Bed" (4:47) a solid and suitably-nuanced, complex, oddly-timed composition which features Mike Ratledge's synthesizer as the main soloist. The main motif cycles around and around just a few too many times before it begins to annoy (despite John Marshall's attempts to liven things up). (8.75/10)

2. "Carol Ann" (3:48) a song that reveals that the band still possesses some of that "old" capacity for creating soul- melting earworm melodies. Mike and Karl on synthesizer and electric piano, respectively, while Roy adds some great melodic bass lines and John . . . sits out. Gorgeous; ascendant into the absolute highest realms that the Canterburians ever achieved. A perfect song to illustrate how unnecessary it is (or ever was) to have to noodle and layer impressively in order to make memorable, likable, and/or beautiful music. (9.3333/10)

3. "Day's Eye" (5:05) a more jazzy song that seems to be founded on a variation of the chord and melody structure of the previous song. Here we have bass, saxes, Canterbury "buzz-saw" organ, electric piano support, drums, and, early and later, excellent baritone sax. Like many reviewers, I much prefer the more jazz-aligned bass playing style of Roy Babbington over the nebulous one of Hugh Hopper. (9.125/10)

4. "Bone Fire" (0:32) seems to be a continuation from the previous (two) song(s), differentiated only by a barely- detectable key shift. (4.625/5)

5. "Tarabos" (4:32) another song in the obvious straight-line recording tape from "Carol Ann" on, this one features some processed oboe or soprano sax over a typical revolving cycle of a Mike Ratledge Canterbury theme. I still can't tell if it's a sax or oboe as we enter the final minute of my third headphones listen to this song--which is pretty extraordinary. My biggest complaint is the same one from the album's opener is the tedium created by the endless repetition of that main cycle--which is why I love the extended "end coda" feel of the final minute. (8.875/10)

6. "D.I.S." (3:02) a percussionist's solo which sounds like a Westerner playing around with the Japanese and or Chinese (or Gamelan) instruments available to him in a Zen Buddhist garden. Interesting but something that perhaps should have been left to John's own private library. (8.6667/10)

Side Two: The Penny Hitch Suite: 7. "Snodland" (1:50) dreamy Harold Budd-like floating electric piano arpeggi paired with wind chime play turns into . . . (4.5/5) 8. "Penny Hitch" (6:40) a minimalist arpeggio of an organ chord that is slowly woven together with TRAFFIC-like bass line, ballad rock drum support, and long-sustained processed (and muted) saxophone notes. Hypnotic but stumbles for its limitation to but two chords that only alternate every minute or so. (8.875/10) 9. "Block" (4:17) in this section of the unbroken flow of the suite Mike's synthesizer tries to match and emulate Karl's saxophone (and Roy's bass) lines! Then he takes over the lead as the band matches his new found fire and intensity. (8.75/10)

10. "Down The Road" (5:48) yet another attempt to stretch a simple yet-catchy drum and bass loop out to make an entire song--a trick that the great bassist John Lee and Donald Byrd's mid-1970s songwriters, Larry and Fonce Mizell, were prone to fall prey to. Not a bad song, just dull and doing little to climb out of its mediocrity. (8.75/10)

11. "The German Lesson" (1:53) 12. "The French Lesson" (1:01) the two songs that rather seamlessly flow one into the other remind me very much of some of the old silly stuff from the band's first two albums only this time filtered through the Terry Riley-imitative synthesizer delays and looping found in Third's "Out-Bloody-Rageous"--sounds and stylings that would become the realm of German artists like Rodelius, Cluster, and Dueter. (4.375/5)

Total Time: 43:15

B+/four stars; an excellent display of the evolution of a Canterbury band who thought it was playing jazz (albeit, a very British form of jazz) turning into more evolved jazz-rock Fusion musicians.

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