SONG FOR AMERICA

Not knowing KANSAS well is one of my faults. Years ago, when I saw their albums in the shops, I thought they were a band like America, Chicago (I actually knew the commercial side only of Chicago), so I've never paid attention to them. It's curious that thanks to PA I doscovered the band from that sort of spin-off that's Proto-Kaw, which is the original band lineup before their first album. Well, now I'm trying to recover the time lost amd I'm listening to KANSAS as they were a new band.

This second album starts with a country-rock song reminding of the early WISHBONE ASH, but with great keyboards instead of the second guitar. A very good radio-friendly song of about 3 minutes.

It's with the first of the 3 long tracks that the reason why this is considered a prog band becomes clear: Song For America is a 10 minutes track with all the goodies that prog fans like: odd signatures, recurring themes, long instrumental parts and, despite the vocals which sound very "american", I think that a bit of GENESIS influence can't be denied even if mixed with a good dose of funk.

The second long track is Lamplight Symphony. Also this is undoubtely a prog song, only the vocals to me sound too "pop", but it's a question of personal tastes, not an uncontrovertible truth. The choirs have their harmonies and are technically good. Said so, it's logical that I prefer the excellent instrumental parts.

What on vynil was the B side starts with a hard blues. Speaking of personal tastes, this is a kind of things that I like a lot. In the vein of DEEP PURPLE, BLUE OYSTER CULT, URIAH HEEP and with a bit of fantasy, also JETHRO TULL. I love this song. It's the kind of stuff on which I could switch the repeat feature on.

The Devil Game, instead, starts with keyboards and bass and if it wasn't for the vocals (less "american" here) I could think it's a YES song. Anyway this is another ROCK song, with a good uptime and a couple of very good riffs by guitar and keyboards.

The last track, "Incommudro", is the third long one. It features a remarkable drums solo, but it's quite a standard prog song. Again I have URIAH HEEP and WISHBONE ASH in mind for the kind of sounds. It contains all the things that a prog song must have to be called so.

Prog in 1975 was about to decline, so Kansas were late, they can be considered derivative, but who cares? This album is full of excellent stuff. Good songs skillfully played, not very original maybe, but excellent anyway. I'll continue digging KANSAS for sure.