EMERSON LAKE & PALMER

Although I can't say I got on too well with their later directions, I do like ELP's debut. Not uncritically - although the performances are undeniably good, they don't reach the stratosphere, but then again they don't reach the depths of later work either. I would say, in fact, that if you want *consistency*, this is the best ELP album of them all - later albums would be much more up-and-down in terms of quality.

The album starts with some rocked-out classics in the form of The Barbarian, with a down and dirty performance that proves that this supergroup can get heavy if it wants to (though it's no Atomic Rooster). Other highlights include Take a Pebble, in which the group proves that it can bring jazz into its formula as well as classical music, and the closing Lucky Man which binds a Moog solo to a folk-rock number with surprising success.

I guess part of the reason I can't quite extend my rating to five stars is that the album feels directionless. Musically, the group are very diverse, but the consequence of that is that the tracks don't seem to flow together very well and it's hard to say what the band's identity or sound at this point really is - or even if it does have an identity at all beyond being a vehicle for the three named talents to strut their stuff. They would succeed in forging a unique sound for themselves in the title track of Tarkus... but that album, and subsequent ones, would continue to have the problem that the three musical personalities in the group just never quite gelled, resulting in all of their work having a similar lack of focus to this one. That said, even if I find their later work patchy, still *this* album turns me on. (See what I did there?) Four stars.