SUPERTRAMP

Being a fan of Art Rock it's difficult not to see quite a few of ones favorite artists in the Crossover Prog genre and Supertramp is indeed one of the most prominent cases of that scenario. Ever since I saw their name flash me by here on Prog Archives I got the impression that their debut album held the key to their progressive rock influences while the album streak that began with Crime Of The Century was just a watered down version of their past elements.

Naturally I had to get around to Supertramp's debut album just to make sure that there wasn't anything that I might have missed by completely ignoring this part of the band's history, even though I generally don't consider myself much of a completionist in the first place. The conclusion that I reached after listening to this self-titled release on a few occasions over the course of the last two years was that it's a decent debut album that indeed showed some of the band's stronger sides, although I still can't completely label this under the progressive rock banner.

The two main approaches to prog during the early '70s came most prominently from the classical music, but there were also quite a few of those blues-inspired bands which Supertramp was definitely a part of. Keep this in mind before deciding on the purchase but don't take my description of a blues-oriented Supertramp literally. The genius duo of Richard Davies/Roger Hodgson was already formed and, even though they weren't yet writing their own lyrics, there are quite a few familiar Supertramp moments here that should make most of the later-era fans quite content with this material.

Granted that most of the lengthy compositions rely heavily on the the Blues-Rock elements, there are those pure melodic moments like Words Unspoken, Maybe I'm A Beggar and the opening/closing sections of Try Again that should easily be ranked among the band's best moments. We all know that excellent debut albums are rare and, most often than not, lead to bands loosing their sting towards their 4th/5th release Supertramp's self-titled album showed us a new excellent band that we needed to keep an eye on in the future which is more than enough to make it an interesting record worth checking out.

***** star songs: Words Unspoken (4:00)

**** star songs: Surely (0:31) Aubade And I Am Not Like Other Birds Of Prey (5:17) Maybe I'm A Beggar (6:45) Home Again (1:10) Try Again (12:03) Surely (3:09)

*** star songs: It's A Long Road (5:34) Nothing To Show (4:54) Shadow Song (4:24)