COOL WATER

Sorry Pye , but this one sucks. I heard this was originally songs to come out in the late 70's but by hearing them they would've been sub-par to those also . Be careful, everybody as this got released with a new cover recently , but the material is the same.

Not a bad album considering it came out after all the moth balls were dusted off! Audio is notably poor and Pye confirms that on the CD but there are some really clever pieces reminiscent of Blind Dogs and Better By Far. Tracks worth mentioning are The Crack of the Willow, Send reinforcements and Side by Side

I got my hands on this CD recently, despite the warnings I have read. First of all I must admit, that this is not a progressive rock, but somekind of "easy listening" with poor production. In the other hand this "easy listening" is done in professional manner (at least in musical aspect) and if one is able to pretend not knowing that this is Caravan the CD would be partly quite pleasant listening. Among relatively silly rockers, filler and left-overs, the highlights for me are: Cool Water, The Crack of the Willow, Side by Side.

In conclusion: There are a lot of better pieces of music, but sometimes then you are feeling tired of technical and/or musical comlexity this one could have spin or two. At least I will keep my copy of the disc in CD shelf.

Lush pop. Lushy, slushy, mushy, wishy, washy pop. I LOVE it. Stone me just like in that silly Bob Dylan song and dismiss me as a blasphemous, hypocritical Judas for not basing my rating of this album on progressiveness but rather the quality and effort put into the songwriting because this is a damn GOOD release. (Read: Not great, this album does have a totally glaring and grody flaw and it's simply that theres not enough diversity, dudes and dude-ettes, but that's not going to deny a well crafted album a respectable rating) Okay, first to slip the obligatory historical facts regarding this album into this review to feed your hungry minds:

Historical Filler-in Fact 1#: This is an archive release; the music on here was written in 1979 rather than 1994 when this music was released. This music was originally slated to be the sequel of the exceptionally great "Better by Far" but for some reason; the project was dropped.

Historical Filler-in Fact 2#: The songs on here are demos or at least, have a demo-like quality. There are a few crackles and a tape hitch here and there but otherwise, everything sounds just fine.

Well there ya go. I now need not to go off on a long rambling essay about anything else other then the goods printed on this dandy disk. "Cool Water" is mainly composed of intelligent pop rockers and pop ballads that are not complex in the slightest but there is a very nice emphasis placed on melody and musicianship. I'll even admit that band leader, Pye Hastings, had undergone a transformation into a popmeister during the mid-seventies but he also became a seriously talented, first rate popmeister during the mid-seventies. (Unfortunately, his songwriting ability suddenly got all moldy in the eighties. After all, it was Mr. Pye spearheading the creation for half of what sounds like the soundtrack for a disco roller-skating movie on "The Album" and something with less pseudo-inspiration than a greasy late period Rick Ashley butternuttter on "Back to Front".) However, in the final year of the seventies, Hastings still had an almost solid grasp on his fleeting talent and pens some real oobie-doobie songs that are well worth hearing.

If not anything else, it's the airy, fluffy ballads that truly prevail on this album. The xylophone laden title track has the uncanny ability to quell my emotions whenever its sound waves linger in the air. Those three part harmonies slowly and soulfully crooning "all I need is, cooooool waaater, cooooooool waaaater, cool water, that's all" just wash over me, lulling me into a tranquil state of placidity. A perfect song for meditating and lots of deep breathing. Magnificant.

"Crack of the Willow" is only second to the subject of the above paragraph. I could never imagine a more (excuse me from stealing the lingo from a stereotypical pitchfork.com review) "wistful" and beautiful synthesizer line that graces such a lovely ballad. And the song itself is about bowling, no less! Such an uncliched topic and Pye tackles it with a real poetic flair. The other two ballads "Side by Side" and "Land of My Fathers" are kind of weaker in terms of melody, though. "Land of My Fathers" does sound very heartfelt and contemplative, while "Side by Side" is rather yawn inducing, lite lite musik.

The more upbeat poppy fare is a mixed doggie bag, as well "Just the Way You Are" is a positively heavenly pop rocker with a bouncy motownish charm. A song like this just throws its dorkiness to the wind and invites you to join in the joviality, which I happily do without the slightest shame. It's a quality composition and you're a fool if you hate it because it doesn't have a complex time signature or universally moronic "universal" lyrics. (Like Yes or anything Pete Sinfield wrote, e.g.) It's the melody that matters, IMO!

"Poor Molly" may just have the darnest best hook on the album, even considering the outstanding ballads. Unfortunately, that hook certainly isn't good enough to be constantly repeated over the course of six minutes! Not even the melody of a first rate Beatles song deserves that treatment. "You Won't Get Me Up In One Of Those" mixes a huffingly long title with calypso and power pop and interestingly enough, it sounds quite inspired.

In complete contrast and I'm going to ditto the All Music guide and say "Tuesday Is Rock And Roll Nite" is a hilariously bad misfire. Here's my first knock at the song: Partying on a WEEKDAY?! Is he MAD?! At least Elton John knew that a Saturday night is all right for fighting but Pye is a total square! Oh and Pye ends up sounding like a completely talentless dweeb singer trying to make his ultra thin voice (which is perfectly suited for the lighter stuff, not "Guns and Roses" like fare) sound all anthemic and powerful.

Pye also is a total albino cracka for thinking he could pen a couple of serious funk numbers. "Ansaphone" and "Cold Fright" are completely silly; totally attempting to lay down the funk but end up sounding whiter than a Nabisco Saltine. Good thing they still have nice melodies to compensate their dippiness or I'd write em off as throwaways real quick.

The last song is perhaps Caravan's last attempt ever at something in the epic, pompous and proggy vein. "Send Reinforcements" is dark, dire and it even has a multipart, almost Pink Floydian sounding chorus. ("I feel so all alone, I feel so all aloooooone, can you hear me?") That's enough to keep all you hardcore proggers satisfied, eh no?

So, in conclusion, this album is lush pop. Always wonderful, always composed for the sole purpose of being inoffensively catchy, always lush pop. My only beef with this album, other than a few of the cheesier numbers, is eventually everything gets a bit samey being so lush. If you're a prog fans who's even a little partial to pop, give this music a try. It's not perfect but it doesn't deserve to be written off simply for its sheer poppiness. No album produced by a quality band like Caravan deserves that.. Please approach with an open mind, for that is the key to this album's immense enjoyment.

Album grade: B+

Bests Songs: Cool Water, Just the Way You Are, Crack of the Willow, You Won't Get Me Up In One Of Those, Poor Molly, Send Reinforcements

Worst Songs: Tuesday Is Rock And Roll Nite, Side by Side

This album contains material, recorded by Caravan in studio in 1977. Recordings spent 17 years somewhere in the vaults before they were released for a first time. Obviously material wasn't developed till the end, so many songs sound more as demos with simplistic arrangements and poor sound mix.

But main problem with this album isn't mix or arrangements, but the songs themselves. Band well known by their melodic folk-pop influenced Canterbury sound in early 70-s recorded there just a collection of simple, but melodic pop-rock songs. In a key of Crosby,Stills and Nash, or Brian Wilson.

Not too many traces of Canterbury sound could be find there. Just very average pop-rock album vice nice vocals harmonies. For collectors only.

Caravan's Cool Water is derived from two very different Caravan quartets. The first seven tracks were recorded back in 1977 by the lineup of Pye Hastings, Jan Schelhaas, Richard Coughlan, and a returning Richard Sinclair, with the intention of demoing material for the followup to Better By Far. A friendly tip-off warned them that they were about to be dropped from Arista, and so the band kept hold of the tape.

Fast forward to the early 1990s, when the HTD label became interested in releasing Caravan material - new or archival. Pye dusted off the tapes, gave them a polish-up, and then recorded the last four tracks on this release to fluff this up to full album length. These later tracks were performed by a lineup of Pye himself, plus Jimmy Hastings on sax (a logical call given that Jimmy was a regular guest on classic-era Caravan albums), Rod Edwards on keyboards, John Gustavson of Quatermass, Roxy Music, and Ian Gillian Band fame on bass, and Marillion's Ian Mosley on drums. (Notably, Pye's own son Julian Hastings handled the production desk.)

What do we get out of this patched-together package, then? Well, if you were hoping for some of Caravan's proggier material, you'll be sorely disappointed here, but then again Caravan themselves seemed to give up on trying to produce new longer-form pieces well before this (the "Grubby Little Oik" suite on Blind Dog At St Dunstans being the last gasp of that side of their songwriting).

Instead, what you get here for the most part is whimsical, sunny, quirky pop with a progressive sheen to it. That may bug some listeners, though it's worth noting that this sort of thing has been a component of Caravan's music from the start - think of their debut album, think of Golf Girl from In the Land of Grey and Pink, think most especially of the post- Blind Dog studio albums.

The thing is, mildly progressive art-pop with an air of gentle whimsy might have been all the rage in the 1960s, when Caravan had their roots, but by 1977 the appetite of the mass audience had shifted. In retrospect, it's no surprise that Arista passed on this material. It's not that it's bad - in fact, it's optimistic, sunny, and under the right circumstances I find it a real mood-lifter - it's just that, even with that dirty, funky bassline on Ansaphone or the disco atmosphere on Cold Fright, it still was deeply unfashionable at the time.

One might speculate about this being a reaction to punk, though to be honest I'm more inclined to see it the natural continuation of the path the band were taking on Better By Far. In principle, shutting these tapes in a safe and then pulling them out after enough time had passed to give them the air of nostalgia and a "lost album" was probably the right call, because I can't imagine this would have fared any better in 1977 had it been released then.

That said, Cool Water dropped right in the middle of the grunge era, so it wasn't exactly going to find an enthusiastic mainstream audience then either. Of course, you're looking at the early days of Internet prog fandom coalescing at around this time, and that audience might have been very excited about a lost Caravan album - had the music on it been something like Nine Feet Underground. As it is, the prog fandom of the time doesn't seem to have embraced the lost 1977 tapes all that much either.

What of the new songs? Well, they're in more or less the same vein in terms of being jaunty pop numbers with Canterbury inflections; Ian Mosely seems to enjoy adding a bit more of a jazzy vibe to his playing than is typical of his work with Marillion, for instance. Unfortunately, the production takes a notable hit - clearly, these tracks were knocked out in a hurry in a less-than-stellar studio setup, but when your 1990s-era tracks don't sound as nice as some 15-year- old demos something has clearly gone rather wrong. You Won't Get Me Up In One of Those is probably the worst of these tracks; To the Land of My Fathers manages something of a course correction, announcing itself with a lagubrious instrumental section and mellow sax solo that establishes a nice, dreamy texture that's missing from much of the rest of the album and makes a nice change of pace.

In the end, then, Cool Water seems to have been destined to be appreciated only by the Caravan die-hards. If, like me, you're one of those freaks who thinks Better By Far is better than Cunning Stunts (because Cunning Stunts doesn't know whether it wants to be full-on prog or a prog-tinged art-pop album, whilst Better By Far at least knows what it wants to be and tackles that head on), and who loves the poppier side of Caravan as much as their prog side, then Cool Water might be interesting to take a dip in. It's far from essential, though, and may be best thought of as a solid 1978 EP with a short 1990s-era demo attached.