GOLDEN AVATAR

It begins well with the spiritual 'Vision', which is symphonic rock. It's followed by a beautiful Indian-ballad 'there is a light' with nice oboe, sitar and tabla. 'Payday' is a bit of a dud but 'Progress' is a nice funk song which is really catchy. Unfortunately some of the songs that follow are a bit weak, like the failed attempt at a gospel ballad 'Is it worth the the price you pay?' but they gather it up at the end with the gorgeous folk song 'Lover of the Lord', which has a nice flute/string arrangement and the anthemic 'Changing the face of the Earth'.

Although the music is generally not as strong as the first album, the lyrics are even better, they are biting (and sometimes cynical) towards modern society, so that helps to enjoy the album more, though if you don't enjoy preaching you probably would want to pass on this. The singeer sounds a bit like "David Gates" of bread and the music is kind of similar to Bread / Cat Stevens and maybe the Moody Blues, but not classic progressive rock, like Yes or ELP. Still, it's a nice lost classic from the 70's.

A few good songs but no one that lives up to it's full potential, due to a weak production. I don't know about the voice of Michael Cassidy, the man behind this band. I can't say it's bad, but maybe just not my cup of tea.

A nice sleeve cover though, with Arthur Rackham-esque art depicting the story of the title track; a caterpillar surrounded by fairies on the front. And on the back the caterpillar has transformed to a fairy himself.

Best songs would be "Bhagavad-Gita" and Time For Going Home".

Their strengths lie particularly in the arrangements. If you look at all the instruments listed in the credits section, at one point or another during the album you will really notice the presence of these instruments. They keep rotating the arrangements, giving each instrument a thourough work-out. Somtimes when a band features many instruments on an album, there is usually a focus on the main ones (organ, guitar, synths) and the less common instruments are more or less a brief novelty that don't really add to the music. Not so here. Their aim musically is to create ethereal music, presumably to complement the spiritually heavy lyrics. The melodies are strong, the vocal harmonies rich, and the music is great!

They have another album (pastimes), that is good too, but not as good as this one.