FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT

Family is just another case of those promising bands from late 60s that never became prog. Their nicest moment is Family Entertainment, which is one of the best "one song of each style" that was characteristic of late sixties (see Beatles' Abbey Road, for example, another masterpiece of this kind). The music doesn't sound like what later would be easily recognizable as prog, but it has lots of elements that would feature on future 70s progressive rock, just not on one song. I believe that was mostly due to the influence of Rich Grech and Jim King because, when they left, Family became less adventurous. For example, in the following album (without them), there is a song of 9-minutes, but no hints of prog: it is less "prog" than even the 10-minute songs from yacht rock bands from late 70s.

Instead of going on a song-by-song basis describing which instruments are played, which I often find misleading, what I want to put in this review is that Family managed to make a collection of songs in many different styles and almost no letdowns (maybe the only "weaker" song is the oldies R'n'R song Second Generation Woman, not because it is bad or R'n'R, but because their attempt of doing the same in the following album is more interesting). In this album, you have the contrast of songs like Weaver's Answer and Hung Up Down, which are typical Family songs with strong rhythm section, Chapman's darker vocals, with folkier songs (Observations from a Hill, Processions), western- influenced (Summer of 67, Face in the Cloud), jazzy and acid (How-Hi-The-Li), with classical feel (From Past Archives) and even countriesque (Dim). All the songs are well-crafted and the string arrangements and extra-instruments are put to a great use, like the string arrangements in Summer of 67, From Past Archives and Processions, or the Sitar in Face in the Cloud and the banjo in Dim. The contribution of King with flutes and saxes was to be missed in the following albums, because his use of the instruments blended pretty well with the music they were doing at the time.

I have a penchant for albums that have this format of a collection of very distinctive songs (when it is done well, obviously, since this is a recipe for a trainwreck in unskilled hands), and Family Entertainment is one of my favorites, and, in my opinion, by far the best Family album, a real masterpiece.