SECOND ALBUM

Curved Air's debut album sat right on the borderline of early prog and late psychedelic pop; for their second album, imaginatively entitled Second Album, they turned the prog dial up a little, with Francis Monkman's keyboards and Darryl Way's violin intertwining in memorable fashion on songs like opening track Young Mother.

Back Street Luv, the second song, was a surprise commercial hit for the band; the title suggests some sort of dirty blues-rock number more than it does a psych-prog mashup, but the slightly harder edge the band adopt on the song is an interesting development of their sound, even if it isn't very characteristic of them. On the album it's followed up with Jumbo, which has them embracing their classical ambitions once again, and listening to both songs back to back really conveys the span that Curved Air are capable of.

The most psych-poppy of the album's material, Bright Summer Day '68, is the briefest and serves as a palette-cleanser before Piece of Mind, the 12 minute number which is the proggiest item here. None of this pushes the album into the realm of an absolute classic, but all of the compositions here have something to like about them, and in general helps cement Curved Air as a reliable second-tier band from the early prog years.