BAKERY

Yet another lost psych album, and yet another one of such that stands as a masterpiece. Bakery mixed not just light and heavy guitar psych, but also some soft keyboard psych too. The long opening track shows off their range wonderfully. Going forward, they alternate from beautiful softness and rockin' heaviness, both to great effect. Going on through Side One, for instance, "Pete for Jennie" is a nice little piece, while then "Living With A Memory" opens with soft keys, and then breaks into heavy and dense psych with interludes. The singing is wonderful, the keys strange and well played, the guitar is just nailed. Excellent and highly recommended.

Bakery were first known as Deep Purple copyists - that side of their music is represented by the driving heavy organ rock of "The Gift". Then, thanks to their involvement in the Rock Mass For Love, they were thought of as a Christian band - "Faith To Sing A Song" is the only track here that *might* qualify. Momento in fact shows the band to be somewhat more diverse than either caricature. "SS Bounce" represents a fairly straight hard rock style, albeit with audible psych influences, while "When I'm Feeling" is more a country-rock ballad. The longer songs "Holocaust", "Living With A Memory" and "Faith To Sing A Song" display a stronger psych-prog side, with several sectional changes, extended solos, and experiments with different metres. The playing is good, the vocals less so, often out of tune (particularly in "SS Bounce" and "When I'm Feeling"). An extended live version of "Living With A Memory" appears on the Sunbury 1973 compilation, and it's a far better performance than anything on this album. Unfortunately, that was the last Bakery recording to be released.

The album is credited to Bakery on this site, and on many other lists, but that does a disservice to that band, who contribute only four tracks, apparently heavily edited (especially "Do You Really Care"). This is a live recording of a church service - one of a series of 'Rock Masses" held at the Perth Cathedral - and the people who put this recording together assumed we'd be more interested in the rest of the church service than the music. So we get to listen to Dean Hazelwood's sermon in full, as well as the bible readings and most of the liturgy, while the musical excerpts are edited for length, and at one point (during the communion), interrupted by an intrusive commentary about what was going on in the church at the time. Bakery's four tracks include a cover of "He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother", and three originals, none of them among their most interesting work, with "Trust In The Lord" particularly saddled with some fairly banal lyrics (despite being one of the more memorable tunes, similar to Traffic's folkier moments). We also hear the cathedral's jazz ensemble - an organ-driven fusion outfit, they seem to be going for a similar sound to Syrius - who are charged with providing music for the ordinary of the mass, and whose music I actually find more interesting than Bakery's in this case.

The two star rating is not a reflection on the music, which deserves a higher rating, but the overall package. If the album had been just the music, without editing, then at least three stars would have been merited.

This is quite a nice thing to have, 'No Dying in the Dark ' is one of the only two singles released by Bakery prior to their 'Momento' album, and they are quite a collectors item now. The single contain two songs that expresses the two sides of the band, one acoustic and the other hard rockin'. 'No Dying in the Dark ' is my preferred one featuring a great rocker with a nice riff, keys and vocals. The song starts with a rocky riff but seems to be fading away in about a minute, but goes back full power with a great rocking guitar, pretty nice indeed. A nice guitar solo joins the main riff and finishes the song after three minutes, making it another rocky tune out of a million rockers came out in the 70's, but quite an australian classic. 'Trust in the Lord' is featured in the bands debut 'Rock Mass For Love' and is an acoustic song featuring a nice melody and a jazzy break in the middle including some piano. Nice overall but absolutely nothing more. There suppose to be one more single not featured in the archives as for now, and does contain better songs. Their second album is the one to go for, aiming more towards progressive rock. This single is worth having just for historical value.

Bakery were an australian group which is quite unknown to the prog community, it's not that they released a masterpiece album and have to be widely known, but they were a part of the history of prog rock in the early 70's. Their first album 'Rock Mass For Love' is an effort to fuse some preaching at mass and rock n' roll, some kind of a 'jesus christ superstar' for the young crowd. No interest for progers though. Their second album 'Momento' is a different story and represent the bands most creative peak, an album trying to go further towards progressive realms. Unfortunately this stayed their only complete album to date, because of their break up in around 1975.

The bands style is a mix between heavy progressive, jazz and a slight psychedelic feel. The sound is quite rich sometimes including flue, keys, piano and saxophone. The writing is good and the band is trying to go from one idea to the next easily passing through some instrumentals on the way or solos. Mixing between calm acoustic parts and heavier rockier moments. As progressive as they are trying to be they are featuring some more straight forward rocky stuff as well, and some album fillers too. The more progressive songs 'Living With a Memory' and 'Holocaust' are definitely better, 'holocaust' is where everything falls right in place and manage to be exciting, containing some wild guitar playing, very good keys and some wacky sax, 'Living With a Memory' is good the solos are good, sound is good but everything is just good and not amazing. 'S.S. Bounce' is a rocky song failing to reach black sabbath on their worst day in the 70's. 'The Gift' is an improvement and although it's 8 minutes long it is not progressive but definitely electrifing with heavy keys, heavy guitar and killer main riff sounding like Deep Purple, also one of the highlights.

This could have been a great stepping stone for the band to go from, but instead it was their swan song. The band kept on going for a few years, but never released anything maybe due to some personnel changes, and that is a real shame. Like i said the album is overall good but non essential. Good cover. 3 stars.

Bakery is one of the forgotten psychedelic heavy prog bands coming from Australia from early '70's. Originaly released in 1971 and re issued by Radioactive on CD 35 years later, this album has good and amost good moments. Graced with flute, organ and all ingredients an album must have in this style of music, quite tipycal for that period, Bakery manage to come with an enjoyble album, yet not quite very well balanced. the opening track Holocaust and Living With a Memory the best tracks from here and aswell the most lenghty , delivers a great heavy prog with psychedelic and jazzy arrangements, where the flude and keybords has good parts, aswell the guitar did a great job, vocal parts are ok even great in places. The rest of the pieces all clocking around 5-6 min are more rock orientated without that great atmosphere on thsose 2 piece mentioned above, quite directly and no big fancy elements are presented. Not very much to add, just , this album worth some spins, but is not something special, fans of Uriah Heep at some point, might give this album a try. 3 stars, othing more nothing less, is not a must have album but some enjoyble parts are present here.