KESTREL

One album wonders Kestrel's sole album is an intriguing mixture of progressive and art rock on the one hand and some broader commercial influences on the other - I hear, for instance, a few strains of soft rock and soul here and there through the proceedings. The outcome is not unpleasant - quite the opposite, in fact - and I'm reminded in particular of Pavlov's Dog, not necessarily in sound but in the sense that both produce accessible prog flavoured art rock which isn't too pretentious to get sentimental from time to time.

Unfortunately, the album never quite got much recognition, and I suspect part of the reason for this is that it rather falls between two stools. On the one hand, it's got enough Supertramp-esque poppy flourishes that it wouldn't pass muster next to more purist expressions of progressive rock. At the same time, it incorporates sufficient complexities to disrupt the pop-prog daydream its poppier moments seem to offer. There's an extent to which Kestrel seem to be hedging their bets there, which is a shame because if they'd gone for the all-out pop-prog route or went full proggy the album would probably be the stronger for it.