LOVE BEACH

Love Beach is usually regarded as THE WORST Emerson, Lake and Palmer album and one of the worst progressive rock albums of all history, and it is really not very hard to understand why: the limited, uninspired, generic and repetitive lyrics (which are EXTRA cheesy on the first side of the album) makes me wonder if they were really written by Peter Sinfield and the average (and sometimes uninspired) muisc makes me wonder if who really wrote this is the Keath Emerson we know and not his evil twin. The inspiration and virtuoso playing are unfortunately, nowhere to be seen here.

Ironically, the only really good song (the best song actually) in Love Beach was not written by Keith Emerson. Canario (From Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre) was written by the Spanish classical music composer Joaquín Ridrigo. Maybe the only good song by ELP is the closing song: the epic Memoirs Of An Officer And A Gentleman. However, just like in the rest of the album, there is no exceptional playing, but in the last song it does not a difference because it is quite good the way it is. Memoirs Of An Officer And A Gentleman sounds very close to what the classic Emerson, Lake and Palmer songs did, but the thing is that it is unable to rescue the album from the pit of cheese it was put in by most of the first part of the album.

The highlights go to: Canario (From Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre) and Memoirs Of An Officer And A Gentleman. The saddest moments are: All I Want Is You, Love Beach, Taste Of My Love, The Gambler, For You.

One interesting thing about Love Beach is that it may be considered a concept album, since every song theme is about love, one way or the other. That can be seen in the lyrics (which repeat the word love MANY TIMES in almost every song) and also in the songs titles. The fact of being or not a concept album doesn't make a difference, because with an album title like Love Beach and an album cover like we have here, you pretty much know what to expect.

Grade and Final Thoughts

Well, I have always been skeptic about low grades in ProgArchives, specially when the subject is this band in partucular, but this time the grade is pretty fair. The album is not very good, regarding both the lyrics and the music, but it is not worthless. As I said before, the last two songs are actually good ones, but they are not great, just good, so they can't rescue the album from the seas of cheese upon it was released. Thus, the grade for Love Beach is 2 stars at most.

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