DEADLINES

'Deadlines' is the eleventh studio album of Strawbs and was released in 1978. It was the last album released by the group in the 70's. The decision of Dave Cousins in 1980 to leave the band to work in radio effectively signalled the band's demise. So, as happened with 'Nomadness', 'Deep Cuts' and 'Burning For You', all tracks are short with less than five minutes, their folk/rock roots and their progressiveness has gone and the songs were clearly more pop orientated. And as happened with all those albums, continues the absence of a full time keyboardist in the band too.

The line up on the album is Dave Cousins (lead and backing vocals and acoustic guitar), Dave Lambert (lead and backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitars), Chas Cronk (backing vocals, bass and acoustic guitars) and Tony Fernandez (drums, tambourine, tympani and bells). Relatively to their previous album, 'Burning For You', Tony Fernandez substituted Rod Coombes on drums. The album had also the participation of two other artists, Robert Kirby (piano, electric piano, mellotron, organ and autoharp) and John Mealing (piano, poly moog, minimoog and harpsichord).

'Deadlines' has nine tracks. The first track 'No Return' written by Cousins and Lambert is a song that sets the tone for the whole album. It's an upbeat rock song with John Mealing performing a very good keyboard work. This is a song with Lambert on lead vocals and with Cousins on the backing vocals. It appears to be the confession of the band that it seems to be no return to the roots of their music of the good old days. The second track 'Joey And Me' written by Cousins, Lambert and Cronk was the song chosen to be released as the first single of the album. To be honest, I agree with Cousins when he wrote that he loves the song and that we are in presence of a great track. Of course we are only in presence of a pop rock song, but very well written, and are a cherry enough song to be very pleasant to hear, really. The third track 'Sealed With A Traitor's Kiss' written by Cousins is a very softer ballad telling us a story of a very painful separation. This is a great ballad that reminds us the good old times of the band in their golden era. It has a great piano performance and the vocal performance of Cousins is absolutely delightful. This is, in my humble opinion, an improvement in relation to the two previous songs. The fourth track 'I Don't Want To Talk About It' written by Cousins and Cronk is a song with more lead vocals from Lambert and with Cousins on the backing vocals. This is another song that was released as a single to support the album. It's a nice and beautiful pop rock song clearly written to the commercial musical market at the time and to be listened on the local radio frequencies. The fifth track 'The Last Resort' written by Cousins, Lambert and Cronk is another upbeat tempo rock song, very well written in terms of a pop rock song. However, it's clearly a track where the musical arrangements of the guitars, the organ and the drums are with more influenced by the hard and heavy rock. The sixth track 'Time And Life' written by Cousins and Cronk is, in my humble opinion, a typical dramatic Strawbs' song in the same vein of many of their usual songs. It's a song where we can clearly hear an excellent mellotron work and where we can feel that the old magic of the band is still there. This is one of my favourite songs on the album. The seventh track 'New Beginnings' written by Cousins and Lambert is a beautiful and nice song perfectly written to be a single. It's an optimistic song about children, very sentimental, and where, once more, we can hear Lambert singing as the lead singer and Cousins on the backing vocals. The eighth track 'Deadly Nightshade' written by Cousins is, in my humble opinion, a great Strawbs' song. Finally, we are in presence of a true really Strawbs' song. It has all the ingredients that a great Strawbs' song must have, great lyrics, an excellent electric guitar work, the simple presence of the sound of the acoustic guitar, heavy keyboard work provided by the Mellotron and organ and the intoxicating nasal voice of Cousins, which made of it a true classic Strawbs' song. The ninth and last track 'Words Of Wisdom' written by Cousins is a song very slow and atmospheric and is another song in the same vein of 'Deadly Nightshade'. It tells us the story of a Mexican man Carlos Castaneda and evokes the spirituality of what he wrote. It's the lengthiest track on the album, it's the most creative and it's one of the best too.

Conclusion: 'Deadlines' is an album in the same vein of their previous three studio albums 'Nomadness', 'Deep Cuts' and 'Burning For You'. Once more we are in presence of a good album that sounds nicely but where the songs, collectively, are unlike their greatest and best studio albums 'From The Witchwood', 'Grave New World', 'Bursting At The Seams', 'Hero And Heroine' and 'Ghosts'. On them, we can clearly see the sacrifice of their prog folk roots in favour of pop rock songs, so fashionable in those days. In reality, we can't say that 'Deadlines' is a bad album. On the contrary, I'm perfectly convinced that it has some good musical moments. However, I perfectly agree with Easy Livin when he wrote that 'Deadlines' can't be part of any list of essential Strawbs' albums. In terms of progressive music it has only two great tracks 'Deadly Nightshade' and 'Words Of Wisdom'. But, 'Time And Life' is also an excellent track.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

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