JET LAG

By the time of this album's release in 77, PFM had become a fairly different group than they had started out as and their influences had changed dramatically: gone are the Crimson ELP Genesis traits, and incoming are the GG and much jazzier inflections. Plastered with a boring artwork, and an English title, this album sees its line-up almost comparable to Chocolate Kings

After a (not-that) short guitar arpeggio intro Peninsula, the album plunges into GG realm with the 9-mins title track, where the vocals are particularly striking, a cross of Shulman meeting Family's Roger Chapman, with the violin doing nothing to dispel this either, since it (the violin) was part of both GG and Family. Halfway through the tracks quiets down to more civilized territories. Storia In "La" is more in the pure late-70's fusion ala Ponty, while Breaking In is definitely in Family realm. The flipside starts again a strange mix GG and Family, and although the execution is excellent, it's obvious that they're no Giant themselves, they sound Familiar enough to be very welcome to our ears. So Cerco La Lingua is rather similar to the title track, while the follow-up Meridiani goes back to late 70's fusion as Storia had, this one finishing in a full dramatic shebam. Left-Handed Theory is similarly entrenched in the same type of fusion, this time slightly Return To Forever-ish , until the vocals intervene anyway. The closing Traveller is again in GG territory.

JL confirms the musical directions taken with the preceding CK (relatively and even radically different than their first three albums; and it's just as well its neither better, nor worse in terms of worthiness for the progheads. They lust appeal to different prog taste, this one we shall call Gentle Ponty