THE BOOK OF TALIESYN

Their second album still has the band playing music with some mixed styles: Psychedelic Rock, Rock Pop, Prog Rock, Classical Music and Hard Rock. It was recorded in late 1968 with some pressure from their U.S. label which wanted more musical material for their next U.S. tour. They had more time for the recording of this album than in their first album, but they really were under pressure for new material. Still, the recording of this album, while they had more budget to record it, still does not sound very well, and the music still sounds very "sixties".

"Listen, Learn, Read On" has some Psychedelic influences and "sound effects", but also some Pop Rock influences.

"Wring that Neck": an energetic instrumental musical piece with good riffs and some Blues and Hard Rock musical influences, with Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore playing the riffs together with some Prog Rock influences. Blackmore`s guitar sounds better in this album than in their first album. This is maybe the best song from this album.

"Kentucky Woman": a very Pop Rock song composed by Neil Diamond, but played with good arrangements. It sounds more like Rod Evans`s singing style was more adequate for this kind of songs than for more heavy songs.

"Exposition / We Can Work It Out": "Exposition" is an intro which uses arrangements from some Classical Music excerpts from works by Beethoven and others. "We Can Work It Out" is a cover from a song composed by Lennon and McCartney, with a very Pop Rock arrangement. I don`t like both tracks very much.

"Shield": another Pop Rock song with some Psychedelic influences, not very interesting for my taste.

"Anthem": a ballad with some acoustic guitar and Pop Rock influences. Very mellow. I don`t like it very much. Lord plays some Mellotron in this song.

"River Deep, Mountain High": a Pop Rock / Psychedelic arrangement for a song which was originally recorded by IKE AND TINA TURNER in 1966. They also used a Classical Music theme ("Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss) in some parts of this song.

As a whole, I think that their first album was better than this album. There is also a very often use of "dramatic percussion" playing (A timpani? A gong?) by Ian Paice, which maybe was suggested a lot to be used by the producer of the album (Derek Lawrence) which really sounds "pompous" most of the time. There is also a very often use of some reverb in the vocals which I also don`t like very much.

For collectors / fans only.