QUELLA VECCHIA LOCANDA

The debut album by Quella Vecchia Locanda is a concept album about a person experiencing an allegorical dream, in which they try to seek out a legendary inn ("Quella Vecchia Locanda" meaning "That Old Inn"...) in which the joy they used to feel in life can still be found. Though the typical RPI influences of Trespass-era Genesis and Jethro Tull are to the fore on this album, at the same time it also displays an impressive ability to synthesise these sounds into something new, yielding a gentle, acoustic style of prog much along the same lines as Premiata Forneria Marconi's work.

This album is distinguished from PFM's albums of 1972 by the fact that there's much less acoustic guitar involved - in fact, I think the star performer here is Massimo Roselli, the band's keyboardist, whose gentle piano outro to the final track brings a tear to my eye every time. A true overlooked classic, any fan of classic albums from the RPI boom of 1972 should follow the example of this album's protagonist and seek out "That Old Inn"...