ISLANDS

This album gets too much crap. Yeah, even though it's probably one of the weakest Crimson studio albums, it's still pretty good and a lot better than some other bands at their best. "Islands" is more influenced by classical music, pretty far-removed from the trippy jazz on "Lizard." "Formetera Lady" is a calm opener that takes it time to fold out. It gets a little superfluous and could have been shortened, but whatever. The instrumental "Sailor's Tale" speeds things up with good guitar work from Robert Fripp and some sweet mellotron action at the end. "The Letters" begins a bit more calm, but the song explodes with sound occasionally. Interesting piece. The album takes a sharp turn with "Ladies Of The Road," a rather poppy and Beatles-esque tune, especially with the vocal harmonies during the chorus. The song has kind of cheesy lyrics about making groups useful, complete with the obligatory "dirty saxophone" that comes off as less than convincing. It's still a good song, despite it's irrelevance to the rest of the album. Things get back to normal with the instrumental "Prelude: Song Of The Gulls." It is a classical piece that's nice, but just feels like filler. The title track closes the album. This is again a calm and emotional piece, rather drawn out like "Formetera Lady." There's a killer cornet solo at the end which serves as a nice climax to the song and ending the album.

Robert Fripp was obviously experimenting with a few ideas here and things weren't going so well. He would soon fire the whole band and reappear in 1973 with a fresh King Crimson with a whole new direction. While "Islands" certainly isn't a bad album, try to listen to other works by King Crimson before getting into this one as it really doesn't do the band's genius justice. If you are more familiar with King Crimson, "Islands" will serve as another reminder that they were always trying to test the limits, but not always with great success.

Standout songs: "Sailor's Tale"