FIRST BASE

I have known this album years before i got into progressive rock and never consider it to be more than a good rock album. there are some prog elements here but i wouldn't call it a prog rock album. what presented here are great rock songs with every song has the addition of an element making it more interesting than your usual rock album , like the addition of brass like trumpet , saxophone , oboe , violins or some piano and keys. the band likes to include some latin tinged lines and some intricate jazzy riffs with their rocking guitar on top. they fuses their rock songs with some ballads which gives the whole album a more varied atmosphere. but what's holding this album , for me , being more complete is the fact that some of the songs are streched too much just of the sake of being long , which kind of making the album loose its punch.

'wells fargo' openes the album with a terrific start , this one sounds much more complete from the rest , and is a good example of the band showing their style adding the trumpet in the mix and turning the track to a full blown party!! great stuff and i wish they kept doing it like this. another good example for making it right is 'king kong' showing their intricate jazzy lines executed with guitar , keys and piano all together , very good . this song being instrumental contains solos of keys and guitar , all good. but tracks like 'the runaways' , 'black dog' , 'joker' all suffer from over extensivness ( which is a common disease ) when actually nothing is happening , and the song looses it's effectiveness , bringing the album down. although they are good songs with good ideas they could have been so much better. especially the runaways with its beautiful melody carried out with piano and some orchestra instruments . gentle and beautiful but would be better and to the point if it were shorter. another thing is vocals , sung by janita haan are not that great , she's not a bad singer but i don't like her when she strain her self , comparing her to janis joplin is an insult.

This is a nice addition to anyone's collection. 3 stars.