TRILOGY

A good album in and of itself, but within Emerson, Lake & Palmer's discography Trilogy is in my opinion not an essential entry and covers very little new ground. It also has one of the worst album covers I've seen so that doesn't help the situation any. Sigh... How far we've strayed from the giant armadillo tanks of yore...

Instead of having one giant long-winded epic track, the band this time decided to have three slightly less giant ones ("The Endless Enigma", "Trilogy" and "Abaddon's Bolero") in addition to some shorter songs: another Greg Lake ballad ("From The Beginning"), another joke track in the tradition of "Jeremy Bender" ("The Sheriff"; although this time the band put a lot more effort into creating a less generic and more complex melody, so that it doesn't feel like a throwaway. It's also got some funny lyrics and you can hear Carl Palmer say "shit" when he screws up his drum solo at the start, so check it out), and another organ-dominated synth-rocking cover of a classical piece ("Hoedown", originally by Aaron Copland). The only other track that's under five minutes is "Living Sin", which is pretty forgettable, and Greg Lake puts up a low grumbly voice on it which is just kinda ugly. Skip it!

Unfortunately, the epics generally don't work quite as well as on the preceding albums. All three of them are around eight minutes long but most of them don't really seem to have enough musical ideas to support that runtime. I suppose "The Endless Enigma" works well enough as a bombastic album opener, and it helps that the musicians are all still in top form and having a blast (I especially enjoy the little piano and bass fugue in between the two parts of the suite), but the chorus is just not as memorable or energetic as that of similar songs the guys made before and after. I'm also not a fan of the title track. It starts off as another Greg Lake-dominated ballad, but not a good one: it's just sappy, with Keith offering a minimal piano background and Greg occasionally trying out a falsetto and failing. The lyrics don't help matters either ("We tried to lie / but you and I / know better than to let each other lie / The thought of lying to you makes me cry" [Thank God they hired someone else to write lyrics for them on the next album...]). The song then leads into a sort of cool jazzy jam before ending with a jolly fast-paced part that's still a little boring. The problem is not even just that the melody sucks, but mostly it's how monotonous the arrangement is. I think Emerson uses the same synth tone throughout 90% of the album.

Still, there are two tracks that elevate this album above the average decent 70s symphonic prog level. One is "From The Beginning": while it follows the same format as "Lucky Man" (an acoustic guitar ballad with a synthesizer solo), it feels far less banal and more introspective. Plus, the synth solo is a lot less extravagant and fits the song much better, whereas on "Lucky Man" it seemed to come out of nowhere and felt really out of place (which is hilarious, but I don't think it was the intended effect).

My favourite track however is "Abaddon's Bolero", which is indeed a bolero: a melody is repeated again and again over a simple military march rhythm, with new layers being added every time. Remember what I said about Keith's synth sounds not being diverse enough on this album? Well, on this track he makes up for it and pulls everything he can out of the instrument, starting with a barely audible flute-like tone and eventually ending up with a vast array of different sounds and melodies that all play simultaneously, like a synthesized orchestra (complete with fake trombone glissandos!). I realize that the song's repetitive nature could just as easily drive you up the wall, though. Ah well, I would never claim that this sort of music (or really, any sort of music) is for everyone. Give it a chance, is all I can say.