CRACK THE SKY

I just don't get why the debut album by Crack the Sky wasn't a monster hit at the time. Sure, the US didn't seem to produce as many big prog groups during the era compared to the UK (or, for that matter, Italy and other hotbeds of the scene), but Kansas and Styx were gathering steam in 1975 and Crack the Sky feel like they should appeal to fans of either group whilst at the same time having enough personality of their own not to seem like bandwagon-hoppers.

In particular, the style on this album finds them straddling the worlds of prog and the harder-edged sort of art rock (with perhaps a touch of glam rock theatricality). There's just enough bite to the harder-edged tracks that if you squint you can almost imagine them as a proto-New Wave group - which by rights should have set them up well to face coming musical changes - whilst at the same time songs like A Sea Epic show their ability to go theatrical when they want.

With a fresh approach, an original sound, a dose of wit to their songwriting, and a clutch of listenable tunes, their self- titled album has an absolute ton going for it. (Modern ears may take issue with some lyrics, but I am reasonably confident they're meant to be a little uncomfortable for the purposes of the song in question.)

As it is, it sank like a stone, winning critical acclaim from major periodicals but failing to perform commercially because their record label, Lifesong, made an absolute mess of the promotion and distribution - for instance, they ended up becoming very big in Baltimore because Baltimore was one of the few cities where Lifesong actually shipped a decent number of copies. It's an injustice on the scale of the commercial faltering of Pavlov's Dog's debut album (the result of an even sillier bit of record company politics).