CONTRACTION

As previews reviews have stated , this is not the album that would have gotten Contraction into PA's database. Indeed, having bought the LP and listened to it a number of times before I wrote this review, I had to come back & read their bio page and the other reviews to see just what was so prog about the group.

It's not before the 4th song (if you start from side 1 to side two) , Trois ou Quatre, that you get to a somewhat prog track. And even at that, it seems like a pale, kind of jazzy soft rock version of Pink Floyd's Great Gig. Although a buddy of mine joked that it sounded like music that you found on a soundtrack for a 70s porn film .

Pixieland comes across as a Steely Dan throwaway without the hired hand guitar virtuosos that the Dan employed on their albums.

Most of the rest , well ... if I may ... the best that I can say is to imagine Karen Carpenter fronting a 70s soft rock outfit with that era's mediocre jazz rock noodlings.

Interesting only as a document of the emerging RPQ scene, and for its' membership. And worth all of the $3 that I paid for it, if you take into account the $1 I got back in cash when I sold it back to Spin-It.