THE EARTH YEARS

The Earth Years - the most recent Magic Bus album at the time of writing - continues the band's ongoing tribute to the lighter, fluffier side of the Canterbury scene. Don't expect intense, complex jazz-rock like Soft Machine or avant-garde experimental proto-RIO like early Henry Cow - this takes early Gong and Caravan as its main lodestones, and adds on some West Coast folk rock harmonies to spice things up. It's good, but it's the sort of good we've heard from Magic Bus before; if you're heard their preceding albums, you know what the deal is here, and if you haven't I think they're a bit more fresh than this, which risks tipping over into being outright formulaic.