THREE OF A PERFECT PAIR

Hard to believe but King Crimson at this stage held together the same line-up (Fripp/Belew/Levin/Bruford) for three consecutive albums! And even more importantly changed musical direction and still retained a high critical acclaim in doing so. Discipline was an exceptional album but like In Wake Of Poseidon was a clone of In The Court Of The Crimson King, the eighties version of King Crimson tried to do the same thing and release not one but two clones of the successful Discipline album. Well more or less any way, the cover artwork for the three albums, including the middle one Beat augment each other well but like the down side and negatives that arise when cloning, each album gets relatively less better-I'm being too kind here- weaker all the time. This album could never be a match for the Discipline album that was fresh and energetic and completely new to Crimson fans, but I find this album ordinary enough without anything as stellar as "Matte Kudasai" or "Frame By Frame" to bring it to a comfort zone. "Larks Tongues In Aspic Part III" bears fuck all resemblance to the sonic, brutal and powerful tracks that bookended that same self titled album released more than a decade earlier and I was really expecting some decent trade-offs and guitar pyromania but was left rather cold. If you like talking heads this would be somewhat more of a turn on and perhaps a Bowie fan might appreciate it but right now I guess it will sit in my record collection for a while gathering dust and unfavorable comments. Discipline is a great album but I find it hard to see the comparison between that release and Three Of A Perfect Pair, especially so in the song writing and where Fripp and Belew combined well and played off each others unique and very individual guitar playing talent to a great extent I sense a distance between the two on the cuts that make up the Three Of A Perfect Pair album. Maybe it's more experimental but thats not always a good thing.