FIFTH [AKA: 5]

If Fourth captured the Soft Machine drifting towards pure jazz territory, Fifth sees them having travelled most of the way there. With Robert Wyatt having been jettisoned, the first half of the album sees temporary replacement Phil Howard on drums, with his replacement John Marshall (who would be the sole member of this lineup to survive to the very end of the band's career) taking over on side two.

As well as losing Wyatt, the band also appears to jettison most of its connection to the Canterbury sound with this album, with the music being gentle, quasi-ambient fusion showing a clear influence from In a Silent Way, with Mike Ratledge's keyboards at points taking on a quasi-New Age sort of sound - as can be heard on Drop. Personally, I tend to regard this album and Fourth as being a failed stab at establishing respectability amongst the jazz establishment - as I said about the Fourth, often the music here sounds more conventional and less interesting than a lot of fusion worked made by highly respected jazz musicians of the era. Following this one, a few rock elements would return to the band's music, bringing them closer to the jazz-rock fusion mainstream.

In particular, Karl Jenkins joining the band for Six would go a long way towards righting the group's course. The big problem Fifth has isn't that it's bad - it's a perfectly serviceable fusion album - so much as it's a little directionless. Well done gang, you've gotten rid of Robert Wyatt - what do you actually want to *do* now that he's gone? With Jenkins onboard, the Six-and-after lineup ended up finding an answer ("See what Nucleus would sound like without Ian Carr", basically), and with it sufficient musical direction to keep chugging on for some years yet.

Whilst I have warmed a little to Fifth - with recent remasters teasing out some of its finer details - I have to say that it might be the weakest studio album Soft Machine put out in the 1970s, being as it is a transitional work from a time period when the group were juggling drummers and were otherwise in a time of creative and directional flux.