LIZARD

Lizard is a pretty unique album, even for Crimson´s standards. Very adventurous, very dinamic, with a wide range of instruments that gives the sound a sort of big band, fusion, orchestra feel, the end product is something that has not been done after. This is quite rare, as so many bands took influences from every period and even every album the Crimsons did... but I honestly can´t hear anything from Lizard in any of those. And why is that? Maybe this sort of music would have reached a dead end very quickly, maybe other bands where not interested in making this sort of music, prefering the dense mellotrons passages and the fiery guitars, bass and drums combo... who knows... But this is actually good, it gives the album another dimension, a sort of bonus point for standing out among the rest, not only for it´s quality, but for it´s originality too.

Each song is, if not radically, very diferent from the other (with only Indoor games and Happy family having anything to do with each other) yet the album feels like a whole, nothing is out of place. An interesting feature on this album is the VCS3 synth which, if I´m not wrong, would mark the first recording it would deliver in comercial music. My favorite tracks are Cirkus and the 23 minutes epic Lizard. Even though the album is full of inprovisation and soloing, specially when it comes to the saxes from Mel Collins, the album is (just as all of the first period of the band) is incredibly well composed, the songwritting is excellent and Sinfield delivers some of his best lyrics so far.

A must in every Crimson collection, that´s for sure, and a strong contender for album of the year (1970 that is...). This music is not even ahead of it´s time, it´from another time and space...