THIRD LIGHT

Third album from this West Counties unit, but this could've been the fourth too. Apparently another album was recorded for Mooncrest Records (tentatively called Beyond The Light or Beyond The Days and actually being given a catalogue number) but never finished and released before the band had moved on the folk specialist label Transatlantic Record and this present album called Third Light. Apparently the label change didn't affect much the group as roughly half the tracks from this album were foreseen for the previous unreleased album.

Roughly speaking Third Light is a bit of a carbon copy of the mammoth Special, but it lacks the enthusiasm and seems to be content on passing like a second rate Dave Cousins or third rate Dylan as so evident on the opening track, Road To The Sea and the Tim Buckley reprise of Morning Glory(one of the earliest cover of this classic). In other places, some trad folk permeate songs like Saturday and Strawman.

Other tracks bear more personality like All The Best Wishes (sizzling guitar solo and outstanding bass and cool drumming, courtesy of guest Halsey) and when Decameron gets ambitious (such as in Wide As The Years), it often works quite well (as in Trapeze or Journey's End), sometimes they even get brilliant with The Ungodly. It's just too bad that those five multi-instrumentalists never allow themselves to really rip it up like they would if they'd written a few instrumental tracks. Never essential, but enjoyable nevertheless.

The band would go on to record their last album that same year (same label too) and would disband, apparently because most of them had other ways of living than succeed through music business. Indeed only Cadbury (Steve Hackett and Mike D'Abo) and Fenn (Magna Carta) pursued musical careers while Coppins was the only to release solo albums. The group still occasionally reforms to play the UK folk summer festivals.