EMERSON LAKE & PALMER

The first album by ELP is one of their strongest, although both Trilogy and Brain Salad Surgery are better. But after those two, their first remains one of their most solid. Beginning with the great "The Barbarian", the album set the tone for not only the 70s (it came out near the beginning of the decade) but also virtuoso progressive rock with Emerson's quirky Romanesque organ. The second track "Take a Pebble" is the best track on the album, a nuanced and lovely Greg Lake song that would become a live highlight. Emerson's piano work is wonderful here. "Knife-Edge" mixes Emerson's organ skills with Lake's edgy singing. The suite "The Three Fates" is not quite as successful, extending Emerson's peculiar compositional style over three movements named after each of fate in the classic story. "Tank" is similar to this, highlighting Palmer's drumming, while the closer, "Lucky Man" became a very well-known radio hit, despite not sounding much like the rest of the album. The formula set here would have worked well on subsequent albums, but alas ELP was to experiment, which is good but can lead to mistakes, which ELP would seem to be prone to at times through their career. I actually give this album 7.9 out of 10 on my 10-point scale, which is at the bottom of the range for 4 PA stars. It just creeps in.

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