ARGUS

"Argus", the third album by British rock band Wishbone Ash raises a lot of questions which can all be traced back to that one key question: why do many consider this record from 1972 a masterpiece? I will try to explain why.

Everything on "Argus" fits together so beautifully and that starts with the title and the evocative cover. The album is named after the mythological figure Argus, the man who kept a close eye on everything with his hundred eyes. On the cover of the album you can see a medieval soldier keeping watch at the top of a large valley. You may wonder what danger he expects and what he wants to do against it with his harpoon. It is an atmospheric image that can also be seen as your personal guard due to the fact that the man has been photographed from the back. The cover carries a certain romanticism in it and that fits well with the mixture of progressive rock, folk and hardrock that the band shows on the album.

On "Argus" it's a back and forth of dreamy acoustic passages and steaming rock full of two-part guitar lines by Andy Powell and Ted Turner, without getting really intense anywhere. The often two- or three-part vocals also have this layering. The one who makes everything strongly connected to the drums of Steve Upton is the phenomenal bassist Martin Turner. For example, this "Argus" is a deluge of subtle sophisticated rock that sounds especially contagiously tasty. Seven songs that each in turn have a place lyrically in the overarching theme 'seeing'.

Opener Time Was has a nostalgic text about looking back on an ended relationship. The more than nine-minute song shows exactly how Wishbone Ash conquers the hearts of many on this album. For fifty years this song continues to have its effect due to its acoustic beginning and a long passage of rock. The subsequent Sometime World has the same structure, but is about looking ahead to the future. It has a steaming glow where the driving bass guitar and the Yes-like vocals stand out. The album continues with the bouncy Blowin' Free which indicates how much variation the compositions have been put down with and also lyrically they always know how to choose a different perspective. Blowin' Free is about the desire for a hopeless love for example.

It is amazing how closely Wishbone Ash with its delicious guitar rock manages to match the look of the cover and then the B-side has yet to start. Two songs, entirely in Ash-style, are magnificent and I don't know if it's because I grew up with them but I think they're classics. I am of course talking about The King Will Come and Throw Down The Sword with a guest role by John Tout (Renaissance) on organ. Hugging to death is fortunately not possible, they continue to resurrect. "Argus" is an above average good album that always reminds me of my fine childhood years. And then that meager bonus track presents itself. No Easy Road, the B-side of the single Blowin' Free, is not even close to stand in the shadow of the soldier on the cover of the masterpiece that "Argus" is.

Originally posted on www.progenrock.com