LIZARD

Though Robert Fripp thinks this is not such a good album, Lizard is another King Crimson album that i love, but unlike most King Crimson's albums, Lizard is clearly more influenced by classical and folk music than any other King Crimson album, though it still retain some of the jazz instruments, like the trumpet, the sax and oboe.

Lizard is also another rebirth album for the band and that is probably why the music is so different. After King Crimson disbanded for the first time, in 1970 after the release of In the Wake of Poseidon, Fripp thought of leaving prog rock for good, but thanks to the Yes invitation (at that time Yes was searching for a new guitarist but things didn't worked out so well and then, thanked by the invitation, Fripp asked for Jon Anderson to do some vocals in Lizard), Fripp decided to keep King Crimson going. With a completely new band, things went differently in studio than in the previous albums and eventually resulted in Lizard's great outcome.

About the songs, musicianship and other features, there are somethings i would like to state:

The album is basically divided in two parts: the Lizard epic and the rest of the album. The epic looks like more like a symphonic prog piece, with a big deal of classical music influence, than Crimson's jazzy experimentalism, but this does not means it is a bad song (in fact it is an awesome song). Lizard (the song) also is mostly driven by the piano / mellotron / keyboard instead of the usual guitar work.

The rest of the album strives for wider horizons than Lizard, since it is more experimental and diverse than the title song, but, unfortunately, it is not as good as the epic.

The highlights go the the epic side-long song Lizard. It is just beautifully amazing.

Like most (or maybe all) Crimson albums, Lizard (the album) has some quite complex song to play. Because of that, the musicianship of all musicians is quite good, though this album is not as demanding as Lark's Tongues or Red. On a sidenote, it is remarkable how Gordon Haskell's and John Wetton's voices look alike.

Grade and Final Thoughts

As always, King Crimson reappears as something completely different as before and blows my mind (at least until Discipline) and since, in my opinion (although Robert Fripp may disagree), Lizard is the fourth best Crimson album of the 70's, i think it does deserve the masterpiece grade.

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