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Wally - Valley Gardens CD (album) cover

VALLEY GARDENS

Wally

 

Symphonic Prog

3.10 | 49 ratings

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ClemofNazareth
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk Researcher
2 stars I find it interesting that Wally’s second (and final) studio album sounds slightly more symphonic than their first, which was co-produced by Rick Wakeman and Whispering Bob Harris. The opening strands of the title track have a very distinctive Yes feel, and both the keyboards and electric guitar on “The Mood I'm In” coming off as sort of a mid-seventies Steve Howe/Pat Travers collaboration (did those two ever play together?).

But then again that’s only half the album, and the other two tracks veer much closer to the Firefall / Bad Company-like smooth country rock vibe that characterized their first record. “Nez Perce” especially comes off as contemporary rock, recalling at the same time both Help Yourself and some of the later and more boring Wishbone Ash albums. Simple song construction, melodic with rather plain keyboard (piano) progressions and whiny steel guitar along with what turn out to be fairly trite lyrics.

The coup de grāce is the wandering closing epic “The Reason Why”, a 3-part, 18-minute Pink Floyd drenched fusion of psych keyboards, fuzz guitar, violin and spacey interludes without any coherent message but a cool trip nonetheless.

These guys were finalists in a Melody Maker competition in 1973, losing out to another British symphonic prog band (Druid). Both band’s first albums were produced by Bob Harris, both were heavily influenced by Yes, both released two mid-seventies studio albums and both were defunct by 1978. So it goes.

Nothing special, but may be moderately interesting to folks who found the first Wally album to be a decent prog curio. Otherwise mostly forgettable. A high two stars but I can’t quite go with three.

peace

ClemofNazareth | 2/5 |

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