THIRD

Third was the third album by one of my personal favorite Canterbury bands, Soft Machine. This album marked a shift away from the psychedelic and proto-prog sounds of their first two albums and moved more towards the growing British jazz scene at the time. With each song being a little under 20 minutes, it isn't the first time Soft Machine ventured into sidelong suite territory, with their last album being entirely made up of strung together medleys reaching too around 17 minutes each. In terms of the line-up, it's the same as their last album, Volume Two, with Mike Ratledge on keyboards, Hugh Hopper on bass, and Robert Wyatt on drums, but with the inclusion of Elton Dean on saxophone and some guest members on other orchestral instruments. Another note about the line- up: Robert Wyatt also plays piano, hammond organ, and bass on most of Moon In June. The musician that stood out the most to me was Elton Dean. As his first album with the band, he does a great job playing with them and staying consistent in his power on the saxophone.

  The album opens with the live performance of the instrumental track Facelift. The first five minutes open with a keyboard part that, after a couple of minutes, evolves into this stabbing, loud, electric sound that irritates the listener, but in a good way. Elton slowly starts to add on, and eventually Hugh and Robert join in, making this almost scary buildup and ending up at this cool drum beat with the band adding a constant rising and falling dynamic to it. Around the seven minute mark, the band breaks into this heavy sounding jazz piece with flying solos by Elton and wild drumming by Robert. The song slowly devolves into near pure ambiance and a flute solo by Lyn Dobson. Originally the song also had a vocal and harmonica solo, but those two were cut from the song to fit the song on the vinyl. The ambience eventually turns into the manic jazz from before and ends with a reversed refrain of one of the sections of the song. Overall a fantastic representation of the new Soft Machine and an excellent opener to the album.  

The next song is Slightly All the Time, another jazz oriented instrumental. It opens with a relaxed and soothing bass intro, with the whole feel of the song being a lot more free and improvisational. Most of the song can be described as the band resting on one jazz tune and then, after exhausting all the possibilities of that section, moving on to the next tune and playing all the opportunities in it. The way the band manages to keep their cool while also playing fast paced high hat work, rapid bass movement, and saxophone solos, and then silently move onto a nice peaceful rhythm. An excellent jazz song all throughout, and I really think the band was at their creative peak with this album and this song.  

Now for one of the last Soft Machine songs with lyrics (possibly the very last), Moon In June. One of the things that surprised me the most was that Robert Wyatt, their drummer and singer at the time, wrote the entire song and played on most of it. Robert Wyatt's vocals in general are reassuring and lovely, so for me it's a good note to leave on for the singing parts in Soft Machine. Moving on to the actual song, it opens with a highly progressive structure, with the song constantly changing every couple of seconds, and Robert Wyatt is singing these strange and grammatically incorrect love lyrics, which too me captivates the listener with the whole unique feeling the lyrics give off. While the horn work might be absent from the song, the lyrics I just mentioned make up for it for the most part, and the violin part I'll get to later also does a good job at replacing Elton Dean's fantastic work. The drumming is possibly Robert's best, with his speed being a significant factor in the song. The song's lyrics shift around a quarter into the song, and Robert starts singing about New York City and how he misses it before switching right back. From this point on, the song breaks into almost another free form jazz piece. The jazz piece would continue into a slow death in the rhythm and eventually ends.  

The next song, Out-Bloody-Rageous, is probably the weakest song on the album. That doesn't mean it's a bad one, it just doesn't compare to the power of the other three. The song opens with an ambient keyboard part, with the happy tone of it making it quite boring for me. The real juice of the song kicks in around the five minute mark, with a new form of energetic jazz not seen on this album yet, while still following a melody. The jazz continues on, similar to how Slightly All the Time explores everything about the possible sections to imagine in the song, but the jazz slowly dies out into the opening of the song. Not a lot to say here, though, like I've mentioned, it's still a good song.

  In conclusion, Third is a stampede of nearly unstoppable jazz power. It has a couple of bumps here and there, but overall it's a near perfect album. While I might like Hatfield and the North or National Health better than Soft Machine, they did an incredible job to keep up with those guys in my eyes. Third is easily not only one of my favorite Canterbury Scene albums but also one of my favorite double albums. And even though the audio quality might not be great, it sort of adds to the magic of the album, in my opinion. This is a 5/5; I would definitely recommend it to any progressive rock, jazz, or Canterbury scene fans.