BENEFIT

Benefit ? 1970 (3.6/5) 11 ? Best Song: With You There to Help Me As we grow ever closer to the progressive mentality of the early 1970's, we must first take into consideration the mindset which lead to these types of "innovations" ? namely the seriousness and lack of childish play that might?say?appear in your typical blues rock jamming-good album. What do the boys of JT do? The perforate their performances, sapping as much of the overt joviality and replacing it with a more serious, hard knocks stiffness. It doesn't make for a lesser experience, it's just a change, you see. They've gone through yet another guitar player (holy bajessus, it was Tony Iommi being replaced. Maybe he was so upset at losing out on the great Jethro Tull gravy train he decided to make really angry, aggressive music in Black Sabbath, or maybe he just liked that to begin with) and in came the mainstay Martin Barre, who is by all rights my favorite of the three. He turns your typical pseudo-serious thought rocker 'With You There to Help Me' into a minor epic. I do love how his ripping tone will crash in between the watery flute. You might ask yourself, this being the third 11 in a row, when will the band be picking things up and rocking the world? Well, it's a slow process god damn it. And, to be honest, this is a really high eleven. It's almost a 12, it's so damn fine. My only problem is how the songs don't retain either the energy or diversity of the two previous releases (remaining formally content with a softer pop 'march'). That may be true, which is why I say that Benefit is the third slice of 1960's pie they finally had to shake loose frm their system before moving forward ? that of lush pop (not that this music is LUSH, but it is moreso than Stand Up). That makes the album their prettiest so far. It's not bad!