FULL CIRCLE

"The full circle" is the second and last album by the British group Forest and it was released in 1970, one year after their debut. Like the first Forest even this has a colourful, artistic cover which craves its respect. As earlier the group made up by Derek Allenby, Hadrian Welham and Martin Welham. They all play very many instruments and does it rather professional. One dimension of Forest is though amateurish, but I think that is Forest's charm. Without that inch hippie happiness, it wouldn't have been so much left to praise.

In matter of goodness, Forest's both records are similar, according to me of course. Also here can we flow into a historic Brittish thinking but in flower power clothes. It's a lot of instruments and the songs have really their own touch. Well, it's an exaggeration to call them a rock band but they have qualitites as well. The record is rather even. The best tracks are the shortest and the longest. "Famine song"(the only pure traditional) is best. Here proves the group the can sing in beautiful harmonies and I got a feeling of Steeleye Span(one of my favourite bands over all). "Autumn childhood" is also very good. Here's som harmonies as well and there's a lot of emotion and some sophistication. "Bluebell" is also very nice.

Three songs would I consider to be quite bad: "Hawk the hawker", Much ado about nothing" and especially "Gypsy girl and rambleway". The other songs are nice but nothing more. My problem with Forest is the vocals which I don't find so good. They're shrill in my ears and that's not very nice.

This is a record that will be forgotten(if it hasn't happened yet). In my opinion nothing could help this record to be more than just quite nice. I haven't seen the inner sleve(if there is one) and perhaps it's a rare and expensive album. But the music is forgettable and stuck in another time and perhaps another world. Three stars!