BANANAMOUR

In retrospect, it was always clear that Kevin Ayers' heart was more in sunny psychedelic pop than super-serious, ultra-complex progressive rock - in Soft Machine, his songs were the ones with the most pop appeal (in a good way), and the more progressive sections on the likes of whatevershebringswesing and Shooting At the Moon seemed too inconsistent (both in style and quality) to be the focus of the albums. In Bananamour, then, we mainly return to the approach of Joy of a Toy - psychedelic pop with a Canterbury twist. Though that said, there is a proggy semi-epic with the delirious and shimmering Decadence, a song in dedication to Nico - whose own The Marble Index and Desertshore albums are actually far more experimental than this one.

The introduction of slick soul elements might be a little ahead of its time, coming as it did years before Bowie's Young Americans or T. Rex's Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow, but it isn't as deft or committed as either of those albums, and if you're not keen on that aspect it can come across as clumsy pandering to commercial tastes. There's plenty of decent little pop songs on here, but nothing as memorably catchy as Cowboy In Blue Suede Shoes or as darkly haunting as Song From the Bottom of a Well from its predecessor.

Nonetheless, taken as a whole there's a certain charm to be had from Ayers' deft playing with and interweaving with genres, both pop-ish and experimental, so I've warmed to the album again after cooling on it for a while; as with much of Ayers' stuff, you really have to be in the mood for his schtick for it to really work, but when you are in that mood, little else scratches that itch.