PROGNOSTIC

Mostly great music, but an unnecessary release

Strawbs is a band with many faces and their latest release entitled Prognostic concentrates on their Prog Rock side. For the visitors of this site this is bound to arouse interest, but before you get too excited it must be pointed out that none of the material presented here is new. The first five tracks are re-recorded versions of songs that originally appeared on the albums Heartbreak Hill and The Broken Hearted Bride. The remaining four tracks consist of one live recording and three remastered and remixed versions of older recordings.

Heartbreak Hill was recorded in 1978 and was intended as the follow-up album to Deadlines. However, due to problems with the record company and management, the album was not released at the time. Not until 1995 did the original Heartbreak Hill recordings see the light of day on an official release. In the meantime the reformed band had released two further studio albums in the 80's and early 90's, one of which featured re-recorded versions of three of the songs from the then unreleased Heartbreak Hill sessions: Let It Rain, We Can Make It Together, and Something For Nothing. The latter is once again featured on Prognostic together with two further songs originally from Heartbreak Hill in Starting Over and the title track. The seven and a half minute title track and the 10 minute Starting Over are of special interest. These two tracks qualify among the most progressive ones since the Ghosts album from 1975. Out of these the title track is clearly the best and it is essential for any Strawbs fan to have at least one version of this song.

The Broken Hearted Bride was released in 2008 and it is an excellent Strawbs album. Two songs from that album are featured here, namely Through Aphrodite's Eyes and Deep In The Darkest Night. The latter features Rick Wakeman. Both of these songs are very good, but if you already own The Broken Hearted Bride then you don't really need these versions.

The River/Down By The Sea is a live recording of the track that originally appeared on 1973's Bursting At The Seams album. Blue Angel was originally featured on Dave Cousins' first solo album Two Weeks Last Summer. This is an excellent song and reminds in style of such great Strawbs classics as Autumn and Ghosts. The song was later re- recorded with Strawbs for the album of that same name released in 2003, but here we get the original solo album version. Tomorrow represents 1972's Grave New World and finally Lay A Little Light On Me/Hero's Theme/Round And Round is from 1974's Hero And Heroine.

My recommendation is to get the albums from which these songs originally were taken and then you won't need Prognostic unless you are a serious collector of all things Strawbs.

Well Mr. Cousins, you've got me scratching my head on this one. While I applaud the inclusion of the killer live prog tracks "Heartbreak Hill" and "Starting Over" from the Strawbs' 40th Anniversary Vo. 1CD (an absolute must have album for Strawbs' fans) as these tracks are even more vibrant than the original studio versions from the initially aborted Heartbreak Hill album from 1978, the rest of the material leaves me puzzled.

"Something For Nothing" from the original Heartbreak Hill studio masters is a good tune but not heavily prog, and "Aphrodite's Eyes" from the 2008 album The Broken Hearted Bride is a laborious dirge. The inclusion of the Cousins and Conrad High Seas album track "Deep In The Darkest Night", despite Rick Wakeman's lovely piano, sounds very out of place due to the song's synthesized bass and programed drums. The album would have been better served with the Strawbs' own version of "Deep In The Darkest Night" from the Broken Hearted Bride.

The live version of "The River/Down By The Sea" and the remastered versions of "Tomorrow" and the Hero And Heroine In Ascenia album coda "Lay A Little Light On Me/Hero's Theme/Round and Round Reprise" come off as little more than album filler. The lone exception being the inclusion of of Cousins' epic "Blue Angel" from 1972 solo album Two Weeks Last Summer. But that song's inclusion is not enough to help, unfortunately.

Prognostic was a great opportunity for the Strawbs to showcase their better latter day prog outings. For an example, the "Pro Patia Suite" followed by "Silent Shadows Fall" from 2009's Dancing To The Devils' Beat would have made this compilation almost mandatory for Strawbs' fans. As would the inclusion of "Autumn" from Hero And Heroine In Ascencia as it's arguably Strawbs finest prog song. For prog fans who want a quick rundown on the Strawbs' more acoustic outings Prognostic is a great album. But these songs removed form the context of the albums they were culled from seems to cast them adrift somehow. And a few later day prog gems are missing. 3 stars.