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Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink CD (album) cover

IN THE LAND OF GREY AND PINK

Caravan

 

Canterbury Scene

4.32 | 2012 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Easy Livin
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin
4 stars Amusing titles orgy!

"In the land of Grey and Pink" is one of Caravan's finest albums, possibly THE finest. While the centrepiece is the side long "Nine feet underground", the complete album offers a melodic and coherent 40 minutes.

"Golf girl" and the title track are whimsical almost pop tracks, the former having fairly basic double entendres. They bookend a couple of fine Caravan pieces to form an excellent first half. "Winter wine" in particular is a classic Caravan track, with that unique keyboard sound, a lovely melody and a totally relaxed feel.

"Nine feet underground" is nominally in 8 parts, but it's very much a single piece. Being largely instrumental, the band clearly had fun naming the sub-sections, with titles such as "Hold Grandad by the nose", and " Dance of the seven paper hankies". The track weaves through various themes, with a mainly rock orientation, occasional wandering into more jazz like freeform areas, but always tight.

For this album, Pye Hastings, who had written most of the material for the first two albums, took a back seat. Although the credits are in true democratic fashion attributed to the four principle band members, Dave and Richard Sinclair actually did most of the writing. Credit is also due to David Hitchcock and Dave Grinsted who edited together the FIVE original sections of "Nine feet.." into the masterpiece it became.

A truly superb album, worthy of any music collection (prog or otherwise!).

The Decca remastered CD has 5 bonus tracks, three of which are early versions of songs or parts of songs which appeared on the finished album. There's also an early version of "Aristocracy" which later appeared in somewhat different form on "Waterloo lily" plus a previously unheard track "I don't know it's name (alias "the word")".

Easy Livin | 4/5 |

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