SECOND ALBUM

My first dip in to CURVED AIR, a band I totally regretted not trying way earlier, after all I've been aware of this band for around 10 years now. Sonja Kristina has quickly became one of my favorite female vocalists, the opening cut, "Young Mother" was all it needed to prove my opinion. Here Francis Monkman provides some nice synth solos to go with this song. "Back Street Luv" was a UK hit, and was released as a single prior to the album's release. Unbelievably catchy song, with electric piano dominating, I'm sure Sonja's voice threw off Americans as it was never a hit here. "Jumbo" is an orchestrated ballad, while "You Know" is much in the same vein as "Back Street Luv", but with Monkman providing some nice guitar work as well. "Puppets" is yet another nice ballad, but it sounds like instead of real strings, Francis Monkman used a Mellotron here. All these represents side one of the LP, and were written by various members of the band, side two (the last three) were all written exclusively by Monkman.

The first two are short little ditties with that "cuteness" factor with "Everdance" and "Bright Summer's Day '68" that has tons of charm, no doubt helped by Sonja herself, someone else singing those songs would just fall on their face. The last is the 12 minute "Piece of Mind", an orchestrated prog epic, with Darryl Way providing some nice violin work as well. I was really surprised, given this was released on Warner Bros., a very highly corporate label that's also highly unreliable. The US LP, by the way features a different cover from the UK version, it just has a normal gatefold. A totally wonderful album from a band truly deserving more recognition that their better known contemporaries (YES, ELP, TULL, etc.) received.

My rating: 4 1/2 stars