WATERLOO LILY

Different album from early Caravan. This release perfectly illustrates how important David Sinclair was for band's sound. Left for Matching Mole, he was replaced by keyboardist Steve Miller on this album, and sound changed quite significantly.

I know many classic Caravan purists don't like this album too much, and I perfectly understand why: instead of brilliant melodic mix of folk,pop,rock and light psichedelia of previous albums, this album presents very jazzy sound. In fact, it's psychedelic jazz-rock, much closer sound to all other Canterbury scene bands, as Soft Machine or Egg.

For me, such changes are for good only - with all my respect and even love to Caravan's catchy songwriting, main problem for me with their music always was too big amount of pop-folk in their sound. This album changed the situation, and it showed another attractive band's side. To be honest, Steve Miller isn't great jazz fusion keyboardist, his sound is usually heavily rooted in blues-rock and early bluesy jazz rock. So his musical addition isn't of the same level as jazz rock of more jazz-rooted competitors (any of Soft Machine, Gong,Egg, Hatfield and The North are better in their jazzy side). But Miller's great role is he really showed how interesting could be Caravan's sound them being more jazzy.

In all, this album is not better or worst of Caravan's albums before or right after it-it's just different. I like these changes, and I think "Waterloo Lily" is one between best Caravan releases.