CHILD OF THE UNIVERSE, THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION

"Child Of The Universe, The Essential Collection" is a compilation album of Barclay James Harvest released in 2013. It has tracks from eleven studio albums from the band. It has two tracks from "Once Again", four tracks from "Everyone Is Everybody Else", four tracks from "Time Honoured Ghosts", three tracks from "Octoberon", three tracks from "Gone To Earth", three tracks from "XII", three tracks from "Eyes Of The Universe", one track from "Turn Of The Tide", two tracks from "Ring Of Changes", two tracks from "Face To Face" and one track from "Welcome To The Show".

So, "Child Of The Universe, The Essential Collection" has twenty-eight tracks. "Child Of The Universe" is a classic of the band. It's one of their most known songs and one of their most performed live. It's emotional and personal with a proper dramatic sense. "Crazy City" is a superb song with great guitar riffs and nice vocal harmonies. It's a rock song very well sung. "Negative Earth" is a melodic and accessible song with an oriented pop style. "The Great 1974 Mining Disaster" is a nice interesting song with beautiful guitar moments, especially a great guitar solo. This is the original mixed version. "She Said" is an emotional love song with nice and interesting instrumental passages, especially the very beautiful flute passage in the middle of the song. This is the 1974 live version. "Mocking Bird" is a great song with excellent melody. It's one of the major parts of the band's repertoire that still is part of the live sets thirty years later. This is the 1974 live version. "Titles" is a nice song well arranged, with beautiful and powerful chorus, well done and with very good taste. It's a simple song with a simple tune. "Jonathan" is a nice ballad mellow and beautiful. It has an impressive guitar performance, beautiful keyboards complemented by the drums. "Hymn For The Children" is a love and melancholic song that continues a dear theme to John Lees. "Moongirl" is a beautiful song. It's a simple low song with a beautiful melody and harmony. The vocal harmonies are also one of its highest points. "Ra" is a piece inspired by the Ancient Egyptian God of the Sun. It's also inspired by Gustav Mahler's first symphony. This is one of the finest compositions of Stuart Wolstenholme. "Rock'N'Roll Star" is a nice rock song with great keyboards and good guitar work. It's a beautiful song nice and pleasant to hear. "Suicide?" is a dark song about the suicide of a man. The song is sweet, beautiful and melancholic from the beginning to the final act of it. "Poor Man's Moody Blues" is one of their best songs, one of the most beloved songs and one of their most performed live songs. "Taking Me Higher" is a nice love song performed almost on piano and organ with tender and beautiful vocals. It's a very calm and harmonious ballad. "Science Fiction: Nova Lepidoptera" is a true majestic piece, a reminiscence of their earlier musical era. John Lees and Woolly Wolstenholme are brilliant. "Berlin" is mainly a beautiful and emotional ballad performed essentially by Les Holroyd on piano and Woolly Wolstenholme on keyboards. "In Search Of England" is a song about the conflict of youthful inexperience versus the wisdom of age. It's the last great composition by Woolly Wolstenholme to the band. "Love On The Line" is a good song well arranged. It has grandiosity and splendour, instilled by massive synthesizer performances and great guitar riffs. "Sperratus" creates a perfect ambience. It's a symphonic progressive song with a perfect and distinct energy of pompous rock. "The Song (They Love To Sing)" starts beautifully with a theme performed by a synthesizer played in a percussive way. It's a beautiful song well sung. "Hymn" is a great and powerful song with great melody, instrumentation and a luxurious arrangement. "Life Is For Living" was written for the Berlin concerts. It's a well written pop song clearly influenced by the sound of the 80's. "Fifties Child" is a nostalgic number with a great string intro leading to a full orchestra intro before the band joins. The orchestra arrangements are a revival of their most symphonic days. "Ring Of Changes" is composed almost entirely of synths and drums but the arrangement of the track is dynamic. It has a good melody, with a repetitive chorus. "Alone In The Night" starts calmly with a soft voiced melody backed up by an acoustic guitar that explodes in a rockier way with good energy. It features a good guitar work in the old vein. "All My Life" is bursting with tension, a piece of 80's pop style. It sounds like a disco song, like Roxy Music in the time of "Manifesto" and "Flesh + Blood". "Cheap The Bullet" addresses society's cycle of violence and its effect on our youth, a powerful thrusting rocker taking a strong stance against a modern "gun culture". This is an upbeat song.

Conclusion: "Child Of The Universe, The Essential Collection" is a very interesting and a relatively well representative compilation album of Barclay James Harvest. Some of their best and most iconic studio works are represented here with several of their best tracks. My only complaint is the absence of three albums that belong to the band's earlier days, the albums that were released to the Harvest label. Of those four albums, only one is represented here, "Once Again", which is the best, really. However, I still miss the presence of tracks of the other three albums, "Barclay James Harvest", "...And Other Short Stories" and "Baby James Harvest". Those albums have tracks good enough to be here.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)