If - If 2 (1970) (@320)
(Review from progarchives.com)
If’s second album perfectly complements the first, released the same year and includes the same high standard of playing.
Opening up on the soulful Your City Is Falling, the track’s best moments are the excellents drum breaks around the end of the track. The following Sunday Sad starts on a pastoral electric Spanish-sounding guitar mixed with a quiet flute, soon joined by Hodgkinson’s soulful vocals, but Smith’s psych guitar solo takes the show, excellently underlined by the pulsing and flamencoing bass of Richardson. Lonesome Nymphomaniac (a rare Mealing composition) is not my fave on this album, partly because it’s a bit messy in the recording, most notably the very shallow space allotted for most of the instruments in the stereo space.
The flipside starts on the lengthy Motown-like track, but soon digresses into a series of excellent solos, including an epic guitar solo. Fellow British jazzer writes the next Shadows And Echoes, where after a full-fledged jazz tour of the group, the guitar gets very jazzy this time around. The closing Song For Elsa is much more of a Colosseum track than most of the rest of the album, with the two saxes again pulling a Heckstallian trick every now and then.
Line-up :
* Dennis Elliott - Drums
* J.W. Hodgkinson - Vocals
* John Mealing - Keyboards, Vocals
* Dick Morrissey - Saxophones, Flute
* Dave Quincy - Saxophones
* Jim Richardson - Bass
* Terry Smith - Guitar
Track List :
01. Your City Is Falling - 5:04
02. Sunday Sad - 8:22
03. Tarmac T. Pirate And The Lonesome Nymphoniac - 4:32
04. I Couldn't Write And Tell You - 8:19
05. Shadows And Echoes - 4:25
06. A Song For Elsa, Three Days Before Her 25th Birthday - 5:45
