GALADRIEL

Galadriel were a minor Aussy band who came and went in the space of about three years in the late sixties/early seventies. They left behind only this album and a couple of singles that are pretty much impossible to find today. The album though has been reissued a number of times in the past decade thanks largely to their being detailed in Vernon Joynson’s Dreams, Fantasies and Nightmares tome of western hemisphere bands in the late nineties.

The players here are all journeymen musicians, having been culled form various local and regional Australian bands whose names are probably mostly familiar to fans from that part of the world: House of Bricks, Sherbet, Samael Lilith, Elliot Gordon Union. The music is surprisingly varied, ranging from fairly straightforward blues rock to flute-inflected heavy folk ala Jethro Tull to fantasy-themed progressive rock comparable to the early Styx albums or maybe a lighter version of Bad Company or Help Yourself. Drummer Doug Bligh ended up in another prog rock band (Windchase) who also issued only one album, but that one isn’t nearly as interesting.

The folksy tracks include the flute-heavy “Standing in the Rain”; “Lady Was a Thief” with its pleasant, lumbering guitar tracks and back-home vocals; and the very Tull-like “She's Left Her Love”.

Don’t be fooled by the plain-Jane blues rock opening track “Amble On”. There are others like it on the album (particularly “Girl of Seventeen” and the obligatory blue-collar anthem “Working”), but the folk- leaning compositions outweigh the pub rock numbers enough to make this worth a spin or two. The album closes with a mellow one-two soft punch of “One Day in Paradise” and “Things to Come” to leave you feeling pretty good and remembering why it is you always liked a strong flute presence in your progressive rock (that is, if you’re a prog folk fan at least).

Not a classic by any means, and the scarcity of the original disk has perhaps helped to give this album a more mythical aura than it deserves, but this is a very decent record and one that can be had easily in the form of a reissued CD. Three stars for being pretty good, and recommended to fans of bands like Captain Beyond, Help Yourself, and Tractor.

peace