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Jefferson Airplane - Crown Of Creation CD (album) cover

CROWN OF CREATION

Jefferson Airplane

 

Proto-Prog

3.89 | 144 ratings

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Heptade
Prog Reviewer
4 stars Crown of Creation is, in my opinion, the crowning glory of JA's career (some beg to differ, I hear). This is the crystallization of their psychedelic vision. Surrealistic Pillow and After Bathing were quite adventurous for their time, as Jorma Kaukonen played around with feedback and Kanter/Slick's songwriting developed outside the boundaries of the pop song. On this album, they threw tradition completely to the wind. The title track is an excellent example, starting off as a driving rocker before ending with an unexpected ominous three-part vocal coda. Lather is one of the first psych folk songs, a beautiful and disturbing tale of lost innocence in a time of war. Triad presents Slick's Heinlein-esque vision of utopian free love. And the album's climax, The House at Pooneil Corners, features a repetetive, jerky beat, urgent, howling vocals and sonic experimentation. The Airplane took said experimentation further on this album than any other, filling the tunes with organic and electric effects and maximizing the potential of studio reverb. Marty Balin's role is slightly downplayed, as it would be in the future (he'd get his revenge with Miracles!), which is a small shame, but he still adds much to the songs with his more melodic singing style, a nice contrast to Slick's stridency and Kantner's flat intonation. The mood of the album is as apocalyptic as the cover, perhaps prophesying the crash and burn of the 60s libertarian ideal that the band had striven so hard to propagate. The next album Volunteers, would be much more of a rock and folk-influenced protest record, also good stuff, but without the otherworldly feeling of Crown of Creation. This is a nice companion record to Kantner's sci-fi Blows Against the Empire, which would be released a few years later, and Kantner/Slick's Sunfighter from around the same time, all of which are superior to the last few Airplane albums.
Heptade | 4/5 |

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