ONCE AGAIN

"Once Again" is the second studio album of Barclay James Harvest that was released in 1971. "Once Again" is in general regarded as one of their strongest musical studio efforts and is easily considered the best studio album of their earliest albums released to Harvest label. The albums released to the Harvest label are the first four studio albums from Barclay James Harvest. As happened with their other early albums, "Once Again" was recorded with a full orchestra.

"Once Again" is one of the favourite studio albums for many Barclay James Harvest fans, mainly because it includes some of their best ever strong and epic tracks such as "Song For Dying", "She Said" and "Mocking Bird", one of their best known and most performed songs when they were playing live. The psychedelic tendencies of their debut album were mostly gone, with the possible exception of "Happy Old World", and the band had now turned to their very The Moody Blues influenced symphonic progressive rock. This is a very strong release of Barclay James Harvest, indeed.

"Once Again" has eight tracks. The first track "She Said" written by Les Holroyd was a musical composition that initially comprised two songs and that by suggestion of Woolly Wolstenholme the two tunes were combined in only one track. It's a great emotional love song with nice and very interesting instrumental musical passages, especially by a very beautiful flute passage in the middle of the song. This is, in my opinion, one of the best and most progressive songs written by Les Holroyd. The second track "Happy Old World" written by Woolly Wolstenholme is a song with environmental concerns, focused on environment pollution. It's a beautiful song with a very nice tune and the refrain is still good. However, this isn't definitely one of the highlights of the album. Woolly Wolstenholme composed much better things for the band such as "Moonwater", "Maestoso (A Hymn In The Roof Of The World)", "Beyond The Grave", "Ra", "Sea Of Tranquillity" and "In Search Of England". The third track "Song For Dying" written by John Lees is a very powerful song with a strong anti-war message with very morbid and dark lyrics. This is, without any doubt, one of the best songs on the album featuring a great and powerful guitar work by John Lees. The fourth track "Galadriel" written by John Lees, as its name indicates, was inspired by a character with the same name that appears on "The Lord Of The Rings". It's a very beautiful and simple evocative song with nice guitar work and nice vocal performance too. The main characteristic of this song is a beautiful and superb musical orchestral arrangement, which demonstrate effectively how an orchestra can be perfectly used on a progressive album. The fifth track "Mocking Bird" written by John Lees is the highlight of the album and is, in reality, a truly majestic piece of music, which became one of the best compositions by Barclay James Harvest. It's a great song with excellent melody and once more the use of an orchestra is present. This is the best known song on the album that became in one of the major parts of Barclay James Harvest repertoire and would still feature in live sets thirty years later. The sixth track "Vanessa Simmons" written by John Lees is a very soft acoustic ballad, very simple with only the use of acoustic guitar and voice. For many prog heads this song represents the low point on the album in terms of progressive music. I think they may be right, but nevertheless I also think that we are in presence of a very relaxing and pleasant song to hear. The seventh track "Ball And Chain" written by Woolly Wolstenholme is the rock number on the album. It's a powerful rock song and the heaviest song on the album. This is a very interesting song with good instrumental performance and also with a curious and strange vocal performance made by Woolly Wolstenholme. With this song Woolly Wolstenholme proves that he can compose and perform blues. The eighth and last track "Lady Loves" written by John Lees is a nice and pleasant song to hear but is, in my opinion, in a little low level than the other tracks on the album. I think we can say this is only a good and simple romantic love song. An interesting point of this song is the presence of a certain Alan Parsons, unknown at the time, who plays jaw harp.

Conclusion: As I wrote before when I reviewed "Barclay James Harvest", I only bought and got to know "Once Again" only some years ago. However, I know perfectly well most of the albums of Barclay James Harvest released in the 70's, since they were released. So, and despite the high rating of "Once Again" on Progarchives, I must confess that I was very much surprised with the high quality level of this album. "Once Again" is, without any doubt, their first really great musical work and it's also one of the best albums released by them. It's perfectly at the same quality level of "Everyone Is Everybody Else", "Time Honoured Ghosts", "Octoberon", "Gone To Earth" and "XII". However and despite many of you prefer "Once Again" or "Everyone Is Everybody Else" as the best studio album from the band, or many of their fans consider "Gone To Earth" as their favourite album due to some songs, I still consider "Octoberon" as their best studio work, their most progressive album and their most creative piece. Still, "Once Again" is a very good soft prog album.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

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