Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Tarkus - 1971
This was a schizophrenic album.
The old "side one" contained only one track - the twenty minute-plus opus of Tarkus. Like Yes, the group merged together several separate pieces of music under the umbrella of one title. I feel that ELP's material knitted together better than Yes's though. Where theirs was somewhat cut and paste, ELP's seemed to have more flow and cohesion, playing as one piece of music albeit with several changes of pace and ambience. There is lots of keyboard virtuosity on here but also some excellent drumming and riffery too. As with all prog rock, I am able to sift bits that I really like from each track, but there are also bits that I could do without, for sure.
The second half of the album is, in my opinion, populated with short tracks of throwaway nonsense. It was maybe supposed to showcase the band's playful side, but it simply comes over as eminently disposable. Emerson loses his classical pretensions and goes all barroom and Lake is downright silly on Jeremy Bender. This was the era of Monty Python and clever chaps like ELP felt the need to be "funny". I would much rather the indulgence of Tarkus. The album closer Are You Ready Eddy? is ludicrous bit of rock 'n' roll pastiche that would have been an embarrassment has anyone else recorded it. Here, it was treated as ironically amusing.
The Pink Floyd-esque The Only Way (Hymn) gets all serious when it references the holocaust. Unfortunately it just sounds clumsy and insincere in ELP's usually pretentious hands, however well-meaning it no doubt was. Infinite Space (Conclusion) has some nice funky, jazzy bits, however, and, if anything, is frustratingly short. Bitches Crystal is ok in a freaky-piano boogie sort of way, although the raspy vocal is very mannered.
A Time And A Place is refreshingly heavy but it now sounds very contrived and clichéd in its vocal delivery. I feel no need to experience this side of music again, although I have to admit that the Tarkus suite certainly has its moments. That's as complimentary as I'm going to get. I would have never have said that in 1972.
