THE UNAUTHORISED BREAKFAST ITEM

The Unauthorized Breakfast Item from 2003 is Caravan's twelfth studio album. It was released eight years after their last record "The Battle of Hastings" which I thought was a good one. So, in 2003 the band made up by Pye Hastings(vocals, guitar), Richard Coughlan(drums), Jan Schelhaas(keyboards), Doug Boyle(lead guitar), Geoffrey Richardson(viola, banjo, ukulele, guitar) and Jim Leverton(bass, vocals). This is the last Caravan record with Coughlan on the drums. He has now past away a couple of months ago and did not contribute on Caravan's 2013 record. The cover picture of The Unauthorized Breakfast Item shows the band eating on a restaurant and looking at a woman holding a big fish in her arms. It is a quite special cover. The elapsing time of the record I have heard is sixty minutes and a lot of them are good.

My over all impression of the record is though negative. This sounds all too much as any band and not particularly Caravan. Some songs seems to have preserved the right feeling but most tracks do not interest me. The best song is "Revenge", a rocky tune, with great instrumentation and especially the guitar is played in the typical Caravan style(7/10). I also like "Smoking gun" (6/10) and "Head above the clouds"(6/10) which is poppy and nice. There are a lot of fine ingredients on many of the other tracks but I can't allow myself to be especially pleased of it. The music doesn't challenge me and some of the songs do I really find boring such as "It's getting a whole lot better"(4/10), "Straight through the heart"(4/10) and "Linders field"(3/10) which is just ambient. Sometimes you hear this is Caravan but it is a pale copy of its former appearence, which is sad to say. I hope I will find glimpses of glory on their newest record anyhow. Two stars!