LIQUID ACROBAT AS REGARDS THE AIR

After 68's double album WT&TBH, the lone 69's Changing Horses, ISB put out three albums in 70, including a double, and put out another two albums in 71. Such furious publishing pace could only affect the quality of the output, and in some case, the albums are fairly week. While I chose to skip a few albums, I went straight for Liquid Acrobat, which sits as their tenth album altogether and their second tor their new label Island, and if I chose this particular album, it's the last one I heard, but also the last to have hit the charts. The least we can say is that ISB is a different group that a few years before, With third singer and multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Le Maistre now fully installed in the group, the group invited on drums Gerry Conway for half the tracks and Stan Lee to twiddle strings on two tracks, but what strikes on this album is the amount and diversity of the instrument played.

Opening on the Arabian-sounding Talking Off The End, ISB strikes very hard in mixing ouds and sitars with Gregorian chants into mid-eastern ambiances. With that and the ensuing Dear Old Battlefield, ISB is writing better-than-ever song, which are becoming quite interesting for progheads (perhaps more so than the epics of the heydays) and to further the point, Le Maistre's vocals can sound dangerously close to Peter Gabriel, especially so in the excellent Painted Chariot, which as close to a full-blown prog track as they will write. We get the same feel with Red Hair, but there it's more than just the vocals that has us dreaming, while the closing Darling Belle you get again closer to rock mainstream, but with plenty of folk flavours.

Other songs like Cosmic Boy or Evolution Rag go back to the early days of the group, but by now, the formula has worn thin and most of the attention is for the more intricate songwriting like the ones mentioned previously With a good smile, the reggae-ish Adam & Eve (after all they are in Island records) and the Jig & Reels suite, you'll also get a small enjoyment.

If this album was indeed superior to most of theur later works, it was also the last one to hit the charts, something they owed Islands after their terrible label debut, Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending,; which was the soundtrack to their lengthy interminable (and awful) film of the same name and had turned off many