GARDEN SHED

Garden Shed is the debut full-length studio album by UK progressive rock act England. It was also the only studio album release by the band from when they were still active. The album was released in 1977 by Arista.

The music on Garden Shed is influenced mainly by Genesis and Yes. Camel and a band like Greenslade also come to mind a couple of times but the two first mentioned acts are the dominant influences. You get clever keyboard and guitar playing, a tight rythm section and some great harmony vocals. The lead vocalist is good but he lacks that original touch that could have made the album really great. The musicianship on the album is absolutely brilliant though and that´s probably the band´s greatest asset because the material have a hard time escaping the clone tag. Clone or not, most of the tracks are of a very high quality. The strong opener Midnight Madness, Three Piece Suite and the 16:17 minute long closer Poisoned Youth particularly stand out. Yellow is a good song too.

The production is professional and warm.

Garden Shed is overall a very good album fully deserving a 3.5 star rating and I can´t help thinking that England would have had great success with the album, had it been released 5 years before. If you can get over the clone factor I find this one highly recommendable.