The cover of "A Delicate Joy," on the other hand, features Nevue's daughter, Noelle, walking in a field of tulips under a glorious blue sky, and the pieces on the album reflect a similar atmosphere of joy and a delightful feeling of being alive. This is "feel good" music at its best, lilting and jaunty and full of the promise of a bright new day. I listened to the album repeatedly over a period of several days, trying to identify my favorite tracks and realizing it would be a tough task after I had jotted down the titles of over 8 potential "favorites." Continued listening finally let me narrow the list down to "The Garden Swing" and "A Vision in White."
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As "The Garden Swing" played I marveled at a monarch butterfly dance at my verbena. "Happily Ever After" can be the soundtrack to the exuberant greeting I receive from my Sheltie when I walk in the door (the sentiment is mutual)! I hear "A Vision in White" while taking in the ray's of the dawn sun filtering through the mist in the trees in my backyard. "Tiny Heartbeat" is so expressive that it can bring me to tears since I feel David is playing MY heartbeat. It's my ultimate favorite! In the bluesy & hauntingly beautiful "Under the Setting Sun" the prevailing melody of the composition transforms and becomes dramatic & bold. David captures the essence of a gorgeous sunset - the drama & splendor occur AFTER the sun sinks below the horizon!
That said, Music in a Doll's House is not all the time very [proto-] prog oriented or interesting for a prog listener like me who doesn't really enjoy blues. This single showcases Family's rougher blues rock side. 'Old Songs, New Songs' and 'Hey Mr. Policeman' are perhaps my least favourite tracks on the whole album. Apart from the high-pitched chorus "Old songs, new songs / Keep on singing" that probably mocks religious choir music, there's not much for me to say about these songs. Naturally they do their share to increase the brave eclectism of the album, which luckily avoids the blues flavour on its finer pieces. social review comments Review PermalinkPosted Tuesday, September 15, 2020 Review this album Report (Review #2447985)
The band that record It's Only a Movie is now worn down by the continuous changes of the group players and the creative effort made in 6 very different albums (published in 5 years). And yet Chapman and Whitney are not content to record a classic rock album, and still they try to explore new territories, ending up in the parody of country-western and soul genres, and in goliardic songs in style Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band."It's Only a Movie" is a goliardic song, with saloon piano, that pretend to be a soundtrack of a western movie. Nice but not serious. Vote 7+. "Leroy" Is another parody of country-western, with harmonica and saloon piano and strings; in this case the track is more melodic and romantic than the previous. Vote 7,5. "Buffet Tea for Two" recalls some instrumental passages of "Tommy": is an orchestral song based on rhythm, with an art rock approach; maybe the most proggy song of the album. Vote 7,5/8. "Boom Bang" is very pumped (vote 7,5) and sung with grit. In this side the quality and the seriousness of the songs are increased. "Boots and Roots" opens side B with goliardic mood (again). The presence of Tony Ashton is noted: the piano is present in this album in greater doses than any other album of the Family. It is a lazy and ironic ballad (vote 7+), with a swing arrangement. In the end, "Movie" is more art rock arranged than Bandstand! "Banger" (vote 6,5/7) is an instrumental song with mood soul and horn arrangement. "Sweet Desiree" is another song arranged in a funambulistic way (vote 7,5), combining latin rhythms, music soul and horn arrangement. In fact it is a Latin-jazz piece. "Suspicion" (vote 7+) mix soul music, with horns in the foreground, with blues rhythm and piano saloon: the effect is a funky song mixed with the bluegrass. The Family continue to amaze for their eclecticism. "Check Out" is the piece that ends the album, with a syncopated rockblues (similar to "Burlesque" but faster) too forced and pulled for long. Vote 7.Even when the Family strive to give their worst, they are not able to produce a bad record, and they end up astonishing for their inventiveness in mixing different musical genres, with always original art rock arrangements. In this record, which does not present any memorable song, that is the less unitary, the most ramshackle in their career, the Family do not write any bad song and avoid any banality, churning out original songs, as often goliardic and parodistic, ie they have no ambition to become memorable pieces. The album suffer because the songs are not connected to each other with a sequence that has a studied sense, and because the songs are not "serious" but still remains a disc more than decent.Medium quality of the songs: 7,31.Vote 7+. Three stars social review comments Review PermalinkPosted Wednesday, December 26, 2018 Review this album Report (Review #2111251)
The Family entrusted Del Newmann with the orchestral arrangement of the strings, and limited themselves to producing rock songs with the classic strophe-refrain structure showing off the technical virtuosity of their singer, Roger Chapman, and of all the musicians. The songs on this album are split between prog songs and blues-funk songs."Burlesque" is a syncopated funk (vote 7,5/8), with a lazy rhythm, which comes alive thanks to the Whitney guitar and the hoarse and vibrato singing of Chapman. This initial song brings the disc to the black sound that characterizes half of his songs, and heralds the style that Chapman and Whitney will adopt in the Streetwalkers, the group that they will create after the breakup of the Family. "Bolero Babe" (vote 7+) completely changes sound and mood, being a slow progressive orechestral ballad, where the arrangements are a simple accompaniment of Chapman's voice in the verses, then "pump" the refrain. "Coronation" (vote 7+) is more spontaneous and less constructed than Bolero Babe and sees John Wetton's collaboration in writing, usually left to Chapman-Whitney. It is a progressive ballad with a rather bare arrangement, which gives the best of itself in the refrain. Until now, the album has shown three songs of medium-slow rhythm, the first aggressive, the other romantic and subdued. At this point comes "Dark Eyes", an abortive song, one minute and 46 seconds, that fades without being developed, after a good intro of Palmer's piano (no vote)."Broken nose" (vote 7,5) reshuffles the tone of the album thanks to a frenzied, almost noisy, funky rhythm, supported by some frenetic chorus, in which Linda Lewis takes part. The song has a paroxysmal "crescendo" a bit forced, which becomes sensational (in this as in two other songs on the album) thanks to the sound of the keyboards (synth?) and piano.Here ends a first non-memorable side."My Freind the Sun" is a prog-folk song (vote 8+) with in the foreground the voice of Chapman, here splendidly delicate, tender, and the acoustic guitar. Wetton sings the harmony vocals. The song is simple but very inspired. "Glove" is one of the top rockblues of the Family (vote 8,5). It's a piece that has little of progressive and a lot of the singing of black shouters. With a progression of piano, drums and electric guitar where even the bass is high in volume, the track reaches a remarkable pathos, penalized only by the fact that the sensational production due to the "wall of sound" of the arrangements prevents the voice of Chapman (which rises in a fantastic performance) to be fully audible. "Ready to Go" is another funky piece, very supported, without the excesses of "Broken Nose", more conventional (vote 7,5) but well done. The last song, "Top of the Hill" (vote 8+) is the longest, and also the most progressive song of the Lp. The first minute, instrumental, is interlocutory, and seems like a way to increase its duration. then, when the piece explodes, we listen to another song with a sensationalist progression (where in the background it seems to me to hear the vibraphone), and where the strings support an ever more engaging rhythm that ends with a great climax. With this song ends a great second side. Bandstand is an album only partly progressive, however, equipped with 8 very good songs, partly rock, partly blues / funk, with a good first side and an excellent second side. The Family seems that with this effort they have exhausted their creativity, their repertoire and, in fact, after being one of the progressive antesignan groups with their debut masterpiece (1968), only 4 years later, in a year where the progressive has broken the charts and touched perhaps its maximum splendor (1972), they give us a more conventional album, although very good, which seems to archive their most progressive and experimental phase. In fact, undecided about which direction to take, so eclectic to risk being without a true identity, with the next album "It's Only A Move" (1973) will definitely come out of the world of progressive rock and will melt for lack of inspiration.Medium quality of the songs:7,78; Vote album: 8,5. Four stars social review comments Review PermalinkPosted Saturday, December 22, 2018 Review this album Report (Review #2110212)
The first song, "Good News Bad News", is one of the band's masterpieces, a powerful rock where the Family show their cohesion in concert. The voice, the electric guitar and John Weider's vibes solo are all very effective. Who knows how beautiful it would have been if we could have heard it registered with all the trappings in the studio. Vote 8,5.The second song, "Willow Tree", is a slow piano ballad that features folk instrumental parts guided by the violin (Vote 7+). The third returns to be more sustained, but as the second does not fully convince (Vote 7+). So we arrive at "Strange Band", one of the battle horses of the second formation of the Family, the one with Weider, which here shows off his skills to the violin in a beautiful hard-colored folk rock. Again the listening is penalized by the bad sound, which penalizes above all the bass and the rhythm section listening. The song reaches in some moments a very powerful pathos, such as "Good New Bad News", but it is not fully developed and suffers from its short duration (Vote 7,5).Overall, this live side A, both for the bad recording and the sequence of the songs next to the first, does not allow us to fully appreciate the power of the legendary live performances of the Family.The second side opens with an excellent blues ballad driven from the bass ("Part of the Load", vote 8) which is a novelty in the repertoire of the Family, continues with a minor acoustic ballad ("Anyway", vote 7), and then, as in the previous record (A Song For me), as a penultimate song puts a folk acoustic instrumental piece. Unlike "93's O.K. J" this instrumental song ("Normans") presents a beautiful melody led by the violin, which acts as a refrain and makes it the most melodic track of the album. The LP closes with "Lives and Ladies", which alternates acoustic moments with electric moments, trying in some way to represent a synthesis of the entire album; Chapman is able to show off his powerful raw vibrato but the song is not fluid, it does not flow in a casual way and appears somewhat forced (Vote 7,5).Anyway is a more than discrete album, but that does not contain any particular news compared to A Song For Me (plus the lack of being less unitary): it confines itself to confirming the Family as one of the most creative progressive band of folk-prog.Medium quality songs: 7.625. Vote 7.5 / 8Three stars. social review comments Review PermalinkPosted Friday, December 14, 2018 Review this album Report (Review #2086946) 2ff7e9595c
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