BETTER BY FAR

I perfectly understand why diehard Caravan fans find this album painful to listen to. 'Classic Caravan' this is not; just as DRAMA isn't 'Classic Yes', and yet I find both of these albums excellent in their own right.

Having just listened to BETTER BY FAR for the first time in more than twenty years (a CD version was released only recently), I just can't believe how refreshing Pye Hastings' vocals and Jan Schelhaas' minimoog (among other things) still sound on such bright, simple but by no means negliglible pop songs as FEELIN' ALRIGHT and LET IT SHINE.

I have always found the title tune a very seductive love song, probably because I was deeply in love when I first heard it! SILVER STRINGS is amusing (sort of Caravan- meet-10CC-meet-Johann Strauss) and MAN IN A CAR contains some ravishing harp interludes. But best of all: THE LAST UNICORN is one of the most succesful instrumentals in Caravan's career (wonderful viola playing from Geoff Richardson, followed by an inspired uptempo jam) and NIGHTMARE is one of their most ravishing songs altogether. (Thank you, Pye Hastings, for your lovely singing and for that climactic, yet restrained, guitar solo.)

An additional fascination is the fact that this album was produced by Tony Visconti, who introduced some of the same experiments with phasers (whatever they are!) that he had perpetrated on David Bowie's LOW and 'HEROES'. I was a big Bowie fan when BETTER BY FAR came out, but only now, so many years later, did I notice how much this Caravan album has in common with LOW: virtually the same prominent drum sound, with a clearer bass guitar sound than on any other Caravan record. If you know LOW but haven't heard BETTER BY FAR, imagine, if you like, a warm, cosy, non-alienated twin brother to Bowie's famous album. Now who would have thought a band like Caravan could pull this off?