A DAY AT THE RACES

A Day At the Races is a clear step down from A Night At the Opera - and I've gone on record here as saying that A Night At the Opera is a rather overrated collection of a few great tunes padded out with excess filler. Here the quality is a bit more consistent at least, in that none of the songs are quite as useless as the most forgettable tracks on Opera, but at the same time the album simply has no songs to put on a par with Death On Two Legs, Bohemian Rhapsody - or, hell, even You're My Best Friend or I'm In Love With My Car. The closest the album comes to an iconic moment is Somebody to Love - an awful, overhyped, overplayed and overpompous anthem - and the best track is probably Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy, which is around on a par with one of the more bearable vaudeville moments on Opera. Truly disappointing.