VOICE

CAPABILITY BROWN (named after England's greatest landscape gardener) were a short-lived two-album British band which uniquely featured six vocalists and multi-instrumentalists in the line-up. Their first capable album "From Scratch" (1972) failed to make much of an impression, but their second album "Voice" (1973) represented their real claim to fame, featuring some terrifically lush harmonising and rich complex instrumentation from the six talented singers and musicians in the group, proving once and for all that the band were more than capable of designing some brilliant "landscape gardens" of song-writing and musicianship. The "Voice" album featured just five songs, with the 21-minute-long "Circumstances" occupying the whole of Side Two. Sadly, Capability Brown's moment in the spotlight was all too brief, and the band packed their tools away permanently in the garden shed shortly after recording their second album.

The album opens with an energetic Funk-Rock cover version of Affinity's "I Am And So Are You". This is a funky Blues-Rock number with a bold and brassy attitude that's not going to stand for any nonsense, as these uncompromising lyrics reveal:- "I am a singer of songs, A writer of wrongs, A dreamer of sighs, A hater of lies, And so are you." ..... It sounds like the singer's dour mood hasn't improved with the title of our next song "Sad Am I", but it's really an uplifting Sunshine Pop song, sounding as fresh and sunny as a sun-ripened California orange grove. This warm and radiant music draws obvious parallels with the California Sunshine Pop band, The Association, particularly when it comes to the lush golden harmonies to be heard on this glowing sunburst of music. It's a song that's positively bursting with joyous optimism, despite the song title. We're heading out on the highway next for "Midnight Cruiser", a good old-fashioned Funk-Rock driving song for listening to whilst cruising down the highways and byways on a sunny day with the windows down and with the wind ruffling your hair. It's not as mean and bad- to-the-bone as Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild". This is more of a melodic and harmonic, middle-class family station wagon driving song with a happy carefree vibe. We're still on the road (or the pavement) with the amusingly-titled "Keep Death Off The Road (Drive On The Pavement)". This powerful song is an out-and-out rocker which barrels along relentlessly like an express locomotive thundering rhythmically down the tracks. It's a stonkingly-good Hard Rock song that's very reminiscent of the better-known "Jail Bait" classic by Wishbone Ash.

It's time now for the magnificent 21-minute-long epic and ultimate highlight of the album , "Circumstances (In Love, Past, Present, Future Meet)". This Side-long magnum opus has it all! "Circumstances" is a majestic Progressive Rock exhibition performance, featuring such diverse music as gently pastoral Prog-Folk passages, wild onrushes of uninhibited Psychedelic Rock, and dynamic outpourings of Symphonic Prog in all of its ceremonial pomp and glorious magisterial splendour - and underpinning it all are those oh-so-beautiful Sunshine Pop harmonies from the scintillating sextet of singers. This tremendous masterpiece is simply sensational!

Capability Brown have landscaped a magical garden of musical delights with this endlessly diverse album of timeless classics. This is an outstanding album you can fall in love with over and over again and enjoy listening to under any Circumstances, wherever Past, Present and Future happen to meet.