FAIRFIELD PARLOUR: FROM HOME TO HOME

This album has several virtues: the music is well-crafted and competently performed displaying an impressive variety of styles and atmospheres. It offers a pleasant listening and a prime example of the musical inventiveness that characterises the late 1960s and early 1970s. Undoubtedly, its comparative neglect is undeserved and should figure alongside the better known albums of the period. Yet, I cannot understand its designation as a work of progressive rock. No track provides the complex dynamics, cultural borrowings or anything else that defines the genre. I am reminded more of groups like The Move and other masters of psychedelic pop than anything truly Progressive. This is no criticism of the album: much psychedelic pop, like that on offer here, is highly original and well-played yet is distinct from anything identifiably progressive. If anything the first 'Kaleidoscope' album with its more overt psychedelic leanings, has greater claim to the progressive tag than the group's later offerings under their new moniker.