SONG FOR AMERICA

"Song for America" (1975), the second album by Kansas, reaffirms that the recording debut a year earlier with their eponymous album was not a fortunate coincidence for the Americans, but the consolidation of an original and distinctive musical proposal, which keeps the spirit of their beginnings intact, but with a greater level of maturity.

A work in which the unmistakable violin of Robby Steinhardt is once again the common denominator that intersects the divergent approaches through which the album passes: a direct and energetic perspective, which resorts to the hard rock guidelines both in the urban "Down the Road" resembling the sonorities of the bearded ZZ Top and similar bands by the use of the boxed guitars and its electrifying rhythm, as on the dynamic "The Devil Game" and its message warning of the dangerous worldly seductions of evil in one of Kerry Livgren's manifestations of his religious orientation, and also draws on the blues in the swinging "Lonely Street", an appreciable melody sustained by Dave Hope's protruding, husky bass and the hectic guitar duel of the Williams/Livgren duo.

And that on the other hand, is wrapped in symphonic elements and their diverse nuances, in themes of greater length and more elaborate and profound lyrics, clearly highlighting the ecologist and reinvidicatory "Song For America", an excellent progressive melody starring Livgren's masterful keyboards and synthesizers in one of the best themes of the Kansas discography, followed by the heartbreaking and at the same time hopeful "Lamplight Symphony", another great development that maintains a melancholic and at times ghostly air from Livgren's keyboards again, and concludes with the epic "Incomudro-Hymn to the Atman", and although Phil Ehart's drum solo might not seem to fit the overall spirit of the song, the instrumental crescendo performed by the full band that drives the final stretch conveys the feeling of grandeur and the concreteness of a rounded work.

The 2004 remastered edition includes a single edit of "Song for America", with very abrupt cuts that unnecessarily detract from the original song, and a live version without major variations of "Down the Road".

Very good.

4 stars