BETTER LATE...

It's my understanding that this is, strictly speaking, another Cuneiform archival release from Happy the Man rather than a finished product. The band had produced some demo tapes for their third album - of rather finer quality than those collected on the other archival releases, presumably thanks to their increased studio experience - when their record label unceremoniously dumped them, and then Kit Watkins quit to join Camel and the band dissolved. What is presented here, then, is a cleaned up version of those demo tapes, though they're of a sufficient standard to help work out how the followup to Crafty Hands might have sounded.

And it's also enough to tell that the band were in a severe creative rut at the time. Even accounting for the fact that these are demos, these are some of the most lifeless and apathetic tracks I've heard from the group - a major step down from the preceding classic album. Worst song of the lot has to be The Falcon, mainly because it's another example of the band refusing to admit that they just don't do vocals that well. Perhaps it would have been better had this stayed in the vaults. Perhaps it's best to be glad we had Crafty Hands from these guys and let their less distinguished works fade into obscurity.