THE ROAD

If there was an album influenced by the MOODY BLUES "Day's Of Future Passed" then QUIET WORLD's "The Road" would take honours. However, let me be clear that this album is not a plastic replica nor does it come across as a rip off. In a similar fashion, "The Road" makes effective use of short narration and orchestration which is nicely juxtaposed with the 5 piece band. "The Road" features a very young Steve HACKETT on acoustic and electric guitars and for GENESIS fans is quite a collectible album to find. QUIET WORLD wrote some highly imaginative and memorable classic tunes here which are quite tasty. This is a wonderful concept album and sounds superb on a Sunday morning with your coffee and newspaper.

With any concept album, in order to fully appreciate it not only do you need to have a basic understanding of the concept, but also feel an affinity with the message it conveys. Well, the message here is an head-in-the-clouds hippy ideal of "a journey of Love from an embryonic stage right the way through to Man" incorporating much religious [specifically - Christian] imagery along the way, with quasi-theological musings and new-age lyrics sometimes bordering on trite. I confess this sort of thing is not my cup-of-tea!

Musically, The Road is a curious mish-mash of styles from the mid to late 60s, notably early Bee Gees and some relics of psychedlia, but mostly it is akin to rock/pop musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, played on a varying combination of orchestral and rock instrumentation with an emphasis on acoustic ones. Acoustic guitars are prevalent courtesy of the Hackett brothers Steve and John. For the pre-Genesis Steve this was his first experience of a recording studio, but it is curious to know how he got involved with this project which was the brainchild of otherwise unknown Heather brothers from South Africa.

Despite my aversion to the concept, I find there are some good songs: First Light, Loneliness And Grief and the shorter, simpler Bee Gees like Traveller and Love Is Walking can happily stand as good pop/rock songs of their age, though it seems to me they belong more to the mid-60s than to 1970. Though dated, The Road has a musical charm that might appeal to a child of the times or those attracted by its concept. Steve Hackett completists will also be interested but don't expect anything too sophisticated.

In general I have difficulty raising any enthusiasm for this music, and must suggest it is not worthy of a general recommendation.

Recently I was reading a Genesis biography called Turn It On and it mentioned this little band where Steve Hackett (and his brother john) had played before he joined Peter Gabriel & co. As everything Genesis related interests me - specially their 70`s stuff - I went out to get this CD to see what is all about. I guess it was one of Hackett´s first recordings and it shows, for you´ll probably will not recognize his style upon hearing The Road. Even his brother John i sonly playing acoustic guitar here (he would change to the flute after being introduced to King Crimson´s debut album). There are some nice guitar solos but they are few and far between.

As for the group itself, Quiet World is shows a very strong influence (almost copycats, in fact) of The Moody Blues around the time of their Days Of Future Past. they did thrown in a few sax solos and bits of King Crimson here and there to spice it up a little bit. It´s also a concept album. As most of you know, this kind of undertaking was a novelty at the time and soon everybody was doing it, even if very few bands were talented enough to pull it off, at least convincingly. And, you guess it, Quiet World was not really one of them. The concept is silly, the songwriting is only average and the lyrics will make you think The Moody Blues wrote deep philosophy in comparison. Not that the album is bad. In fact, if you like MB and don´t care much for originality, you should try to listen to this album (but I don´t recommend you to buy it). On the plus side, I should mentioned that the songs are well arranged and orchestrated, and some vocals are impressive (echoes of early Bee Gees too). Maybe with time and experience they could produce something more consistent and original, but they broke up soon after this album was out and the Hacketts were already flexing their muscles for much bigger things.

All in all I find out The Road to be a product of the time. Nice, but ultimately unimpressive. More a curio than anything else.

Rating: two stars.