OUT OF REACH

So pointless that the band members themselves have disowned it, this one doesn't even have Czukay in a token role, which helps explain why many fans don't acknowledge this as a proper Can album. I will admit that it has some advantages over Delight: it's less monotonous, and I actually honestly enjoy some of the tracks on here, which I wouldn't have said about this album's predecessor. The lows, however, are offensively bad, and the lessening of monotony comes at the price of the band seemingly not having any idea what direction it wants to go, so the album gets the same rating as before.

The highpoint is undoubtedly the moody seven-minute instrumental "November," which uses a lot of tasteful piano to complement some great emotional guitar solos, and which also features (to my ears) something that wasn't found on the last album: a decent blend of the percussion attacks of Jaki and Reebop, where they're clearly distinct but clearly working together. It's nowhere near as good as the better instrumental work from the band's prime, but it's a marked improvement over everything from Saw, and that counts for something.

Other decent tracks include "Seven Days Awake," an instrumental which adds little to Can's legacy but is at least kind enough to be depressing, and the totally incongruous "Give Me No Roses," a bouncy Gee-sung pop number that has a neat little chorus. Unfortunately, that's only three tracks out of seven. The opening "Serpentine" reminds me too much of the kind of noodling that took up Delight (at least it's only four minutes, though), "Pauper's Daughter and I" is an incredibly obnoxious pop song that makes the mistake of lasting a whole six minutes, and the closing "One More Day" is a completely pointless two-minute "astral" instrumental. And, of course, there's "Like INOBE GOD," a piece of "ethnic" muzak with terrible Reebop vocals, the kind of thing I'd expect to hear from a cross between late-period Can and Murph and the Magic Tones (see the movie The Blues Brothers if you don't get what I'm talking about) while dining in a Holiday Inn. This is just AWFUL.

If you're a Can fanatic, hunt down the best tracks from this online. Otherwise, just pretend this never existed; you and the band will get on quite well if you do that.