LOVE BEACH

Emerson, Lake & Palmer's seventh studio record "Love Beach" from 1978 is a different record from the band. The cover is terrible just as on the Works' records, but eventually even more ugly. It is almost like a parody, three very smiling men on an exotic beach and a record name such as "Love Beach". Fortunately the music still contains a lot of great elements. Though it is obvious now that the music of the band is on its way down to less progressive music. Some tracks here are very weak pieces if we prepare them with earlier ELP.

The album starts with some familiar and wonderful tunes. It gives us hope that the first track will be fantastic. Well it cheated us a bit, "Al I want is you" becomes quite trivial but it's still a nice starter(6/10). Then comes "Love Beach", the title song, a kind little bit but not great in any way(5/10) and it is followed by "Taste of my love" another quite boring track(4/10) and the worst thing here "The Gambler"(4/10) which I'm not interested in hearing again. The hightlight of the album are beside "All I want Is you" "For you"(7/10) an exciting piece of atmospheric tunes and great vocals, "Canario" (6/10) an instrumental bit which pleases the listener and especially "Memoirs of an officer and a Gentleman", a long symphonic work(7/10) that proves that the band were still competent and could manage to play exciting expressions. It is a varied combination of melodies and nice lyrics, it has a lot of feeling and quality. I wouldn't compare it too much with earlier Emerson, Lake & Palmer songs but it is the best this record contains. I recommend you to listen to the tracks 1, 5, 6 & 7. You can skip the rest.

As a whole record I would give it 2,79 stars which here becomes three. Of course I am a bit disappointed but not very much because earlier rating indicated this wasn't a success. Though I am still curious about hering next thing from ELP which will be a live recording.