BEFOUR (WITH THE TRINITY)

Recorded after their split with Julie Driscoll, Befour found the Trinity steering away from wide-eyed psychedelic pop to get down and dirty with some jazz fusion material. This might have alienated fans of their prior work, but it did at least position Auger as one of the more interesting of the early prog keyboardists, even if his work isn't as widely celebrated as the likes of Keith Emerson, Dave Greenslade, Tony Banks, Rick Wakeman or Hugh Banton in retrospect. Punchy without being obnoxious, clever without being pretentious, and technically complex without being dull, it's as confident a transition from psychedelia to progressive rock as ever I've seen in stylistic terms.

It's just a shame that the material here isn't that hot. The vast majority of the material consists of cover versions which add nothing to the source material and, instead, largely take away from it. I Wanna Take You Higher isn't improved by just ditching the backing singers from the original Sly and the Family Stone version, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage didn't need all this organ warbling over it - in general, Auger and the Trinity seem to be engaged in a covers band-oriented approach which had worked somewhat better earlier in the 1960s but by this point in time was wearing thin.