CATAPILLA

I'm usually a sucker for great jazz-fusion combos that can lay down a mean jam, but there are times when the jams don't result in me getting excited about the music. Case in point, this English jazz-rock group with the unusual name Catapilla.

The sound is cluttered with saxophones, but the guitars do break out and give nice riffs/solos. The band overall plays a brand of jazz-rock not dissimilar to that of Chicago's, but the compositions come only to knee's height of Chicago's calibre.

Here's how I see CATAPILLA; if the song is under ten minutes, it's not terrible. If the song is over ten minutes, prepare for the underwhelming soloing exercises. Either way, you'll have to put up with the strange vocals of one Anna Meek, a woman who sounds like a hybrid of Grace Slick and Eddie Vedder.

I can explain my love for the two shorter songs by making my case against the longer ones. For ''Naked Death'', the song starts out nicely but later trudges into ten minutes of the least exciting jamming I've heard in my life. This is saying something from the man that kisses the throne of Chicago's ''Liberation''. ''Embryonic Fusion'' has more structure but still feels like it has to jam (filling out record space). I swear there's a part that feels like a three minute section is looped for ten minutes; plus, there's a spot where the guitar simply vanishes from the production.

''Promises'' and ''Tumbleweed'' really showcase what Catapilla could do in terms of songwriting and keeping the jams to a reasonable length. Interesting fusion but an incredible endurance test to listen to in one go.