A DAY AT THE RACES

After the previous succes of A Night At The Opera Queen was left with the impossible task to surpass their masterpiece. No worries, they had the skills and the idea's, but in comparison A Day At The Races will always remain in the shadow of it's immortal predesessor, still a very good album.

Starting with a deep gong and guitar symphonificated intro the album goes off in full flight with the great Tie Your Mother Down, a guitar based rock piece. After the grand opening we find ouselves in the beautifull You Take My Breath Away a slow classical sounding love song, which for the real music lovers really takes your breath away. awsome, listen and judge yourself. Brian May expands on his ideas for "39 from their previous album and adds a nice folk like rock song which leans heavy on the relaxed guiter parts, and makes for an enjoyable listening.

Of course the little joke can't be left out, freddie found himself being a millionaire overnight because of the smash hit Bohemian Rhapsody was, so naturaly there is a song to celebrate it. A fabulous rock/walz in the typical Mercury vein was written, dominated by drums and a great guitar part, but mainly driven by Mercury's voice. A great rock song, which stands it's ground between classics like Bohemian and Somebody To Love, though both are better songs on the whole.

You and I is the Deacon song from this album, as ussual very nice. The next song in line is the well known Somebody To Love, one of the 8 great Queen songs (the other 7 you may fill in yourself, plenty to choose from) a love song, gospel hard rock.

White Man shows where the intro and outro of the album really comes from, a for Queen's standard involved political song, some North America Indian drum rhythms really great and fairly heavy, with great guitar and pounding bass and drum. Followed by the last in line of Mercury's vaudeville type of piano inflicted pop songs Good Old Fahioned Loverboy. Drowse is a must have heard song, written by Roger so it's more raw in nature than the other more polished pieces, great guitar works and very well sung by Roger.

The album finishes with the Japanese Thank you song, Queen was well respected in Japan and so they made a song with some Japanese lyrics in it, the translation is also present in English in the song. basically it is a slow ballad, ending as the album began, with some fabulous guitar extravaganze (not heavy, just sweet) but great moments are present in this song. A bit comparable with Who Wants To Live Forever, so it seems all soft and dellicate, but some undercurrent heavyness is part of the song.

After the not-enough-praised previous album Queen managed to get their next album in to the same quality standard. Not as brilliant as it's predecessor but still a worthy addition to any record collection.

Very Much Recommended.