INDELIBLY STAMPED

It's hard to see this one as anything other than a mild disaster for Supertramp. To be fair to them, it was recorded under pretty adverse conditions - after the debut album, most of the band left, leaving Hodgson and Davies scrambling to put together a new lineup! The other problem with the album is that the band simply don't know who they are - they don't know what musical direction they want to take, and as a consequence they try a little bit of everything and don't achieve very much in any of the formats they try out.

Album opener Your Poppa Don't Mind adds nothing to a very basic bar band hard rock format beyond a bit of piano work from from Rick, Rosie is a dull attempt at something resembling folk-rock, Forever sounds like a sappy attempt to mimic the late Beatles sound that falls far, far short of the standards of said band, and so on. I suppose Travelled is a pleasant enough prog piece with some nice flute from Dave Winthrop, but it's not exactly memorable or interesting or even, by this point in time, especially novel. Likewise, Aries is alright before it descends into a completely aimless Santana-tinged jam that goes nowhere, giving rise to a mental image of the band noodling away with one eye on the clock, trying to squeeze out enough noise to fill the remainder of the album, as Dave Stewart confesses happened when Arzachel recorded their sole self-titled album.

The problem of course, is that Stewart, Campbell, Brooks and Hillage did the whole "aimless jamming" thing much better... as had Santana... in fact, most early prog, psych, hard rock, folk rock and other such bands had already produced far, far better material than what is present here, and Supertramp neither bring anything new to the table nor grind out the cliched material they have with sufficient flair to convince me to forgive the lack of originality. This is an album which plays like a demo tape, the new lineup trying out a range of different "outfits" only to find that none of them fit. And ultimately, it would take the whole band quitting on poor Roger and Rick *yet again* and for a third new lineup to form before Supertramp really got into their groove.