TIME AND TIDE

Time and Tide is never going to win any awards as a prog classic but it is diverting in patches and the band, on this album, is fully deserving of it's second tier categorisation in the UK league of 'prog importance'. Still, it's the second side here that's most fun with a quintet of pleasant songs, the best of which is Doldrums. The first side is somewhat weaker with two non-descript vocal tracks to open and then two pedestrian instrumentals to follow. The Mellotron and Rhodes-based Tide is the better of the two (Time's choir and harpsichord arrangement smacks of pointless hubris). These are followed by another instrumental, Catalan, which has enough variation and energy to keep you motivated to listen through and flip the record. Not bad, not great, it's an agreeable enough way to pass half an hour, which deoes smack of damnation via faint praise. Greenslade were never top echelon and on this were beginning to slip down another rung.