WE'LL TALK ABOUT IT LATER

Nucleus step up a few gears, and even miss a couple, with the release of their second album, We'll Talk About It Later. The band, consisting of the same line up of Carr/Jenkins/Spedding/Clyne/Smith/Marshall, fuse their brand of British fusion with a little more aggresion and urgency but at the same time the band fail to contain the cohesive consistency of the Elastic Rock album. "Song For The Bearded Lady" literally kicks starts the album. Carr's fine trumpet line plays as an introdution before the band swagger through the tune with a funky groove and very cool riff. In fact Jenkins liked this structure so much he would revists it when he joined Soft Machine as it would form the nucleus of the massive "Hazard Profile" on the Bundles album. Chris Spedding must take credit for his work here. His guitar comes alive throughout the recording with a wide array of effects and sweet and mean playing. But while he was inspired band leader Ian Carr is not as constructive as he was on the debut album. Obviously he gives it as much as he can but I sense that he was being overshadowed by both Carl Jenkins and Chris Spedding. Though on "Lullaby For A Lonely Child" the band really draw on all they can muster to make it a memorable piece of jazz rock before the dirty sleaze of the title track. Of course with the good comes the strange. "Ballad Of Joe Pimp" is strange due to fact that there is a vocal on it! Though this does not come off that exciting, and being a big riff like tune it may have passed off well hidden on Black Sabbath's eclectic Never Say Die (no joking). But its place here is rather questionable. If the track, sung poorly, was meant to carry a sense of humour it fails, but the band continued to go down a unclear path with "Easter 1916" by, again, having a lyric that is neither here nor there and then vanishes somewhere... but the end of the track is some wild free jazz but sounds more forced than free. All in all the second Nucleus album hits the energetic heights missed by the first one. But the lack of consistency, though perthaps it may be only subtle, is a draw back in areas. The production leaves a lot to be desired and that extra needed dynamic is never there for an auaral ride, just to give the music that extra needed punch.