“Formentera Lady” begins with a lengthy string bass solo (played with a bow). We hear saxophone noodlings, soon joined by more bowed stringed instruments that eventually find common ground, as a woman moans wordlessly above, occasionally sounding like Peter Gabriel from one of his ‘80s soundtracks. There’s a seamless transition to “Sailor’s Tale”, which would appear to be a musical portrait of a storm at sea. The sax and guitar wander about before finding a part to play in unison, then separate. The 6/8 time gets less frenetic, giving Fripp a chance to explore another guitar tone. The rhythm picks up again, heralding the return of the Mellotron. Things turn particularly sinister, before everything gets swallowed up by a rapidly strummed guitar, slowly decelerating to resolve on a major chord, though the final fade is given over to a minor-key drone. Unfortunately “The Letters” is particularly melodramatic lyrically and musically, and taken at such a slow speed it’s clear the two elements aren’t matched at all well. If you’re a fan of skronky sax for three straight tracks, you’ll love this.
Having ended side one with the sad tale of women involved with the same man, side two begins rather strangely with—and don’t say you saw this coming—an ode to The Groupie. “Ladies Of The Road” follows a fairly standard rock path with little subtlety, complete with a sax and drums combo right out of a typical movie scene in a striptease club. Only the chorus, decorated with what sounds like a backwards guitar, sounds unlike a parody. Luckily, the rest of the album rises above this. “Prelude: Song Of The Gulls” is a lovely chamber music piece for strings and oboe. Sure, it’s fairly basic, but it’s a nice setup for the title track, which begins with a mournful piano and vocal, ending with seven minutes of soft harmonium underneath trumpet, piano and sax solos, occasionally finding a slightly more major key.
Islands is a better listen than Lizard, and even the second album, but still not quite up to the standard of the debut. The fact that they were on their fourth lineup after four albums is probably the easiest culprit. Still, the better parts of the album outshine the lesser elements, making it a worthy representation of the band. The advent of digital technology theoretically makes it easier to skip those below-par segments, depending on the version available, apart from the different covers for the US and UK. One of the first CDs, despite being labeled “THE DEFINITIVE EDITION”, starts “Sailor’s Tale” five minutes early (in the middle of “Formentera Lady”) and doesn’t include the hidden studio glimpse at the end of the title track; that’s since been rectified. The 40th Anniversary Edition of the album sported a new stereo mix with proper indexing, plus bonus tracks in the form of alternate takes of some tracks, and a snippet titled “A Peacemaking Stint Unrolls”, which is basically an early incarnation of the title track to their next album.
King Crimson Islands (1971)—3
2010 40th Anniversary Edition: same as 1971, plus 6 extra tracks (plus DVD)
I’ve been posting badly proofread comments on various WRC pages for over 25 years now. But this is the first time that I’ve ever had a request! Figures it would be for such a challenging album!
ReplyDeleteThe one thing is that, more than any other King Crimson release, Fripp is trying just about everything but the kitchen sink. He does both the tried and true and new experiments. This time, however, results in a lack of album continuity.
One of tracks in the first category is the opening track. The first thing apparent is that Boz’s voice is quite a relief from Haskell’s. Still, one still misses Greg Lake! We got some familiar elements – the skittering piano, pretty flutes. Sinfield’s lyrics continue to tend more earthward. This time, he’s musing over his Spanish girlfriend, somewhat pretentiously. The track does go on for about three minutes too long. The discordant sax and female vocals are pointless.
I really disagree with you about the “The Letters”. The changes in the music and the vocals, I think, very well reflect what’s happening in the lyrics. This is particularly true when the saxes come in, totally unexpectedly, after the first verse. All these elements, of course, were heard in prior Crimson songs.
The first track that I heard from the album, thanks to “A Young Person’s Guide..”, was “Ladies of the Road”. It was quite the surprise, one of the departures from the original KC sound. I never thought I’d hear a song about groupies from King Crimson. For one thing, I wouldn’t think that KC’s music would appeal to most women. In fact, now that I think about it, it doesn’t have much sex appeal! For another, I wouldn’t think that stuffy Robert Fripp would have the patience to deal with groupies. I guess Sinfield had a different experience! I get the impression that you’re somewhat offended by the song. Well, the lyrics are at least clever and funny. No worse than “Stay with Me” or “Star Star”, anyway. To be sure, Pete would write much worse soon! The band comes up with appropriately sleazy music to match, which makes the track very entertaining.
The “Prelude” – well, it’s just that. Fripp evidently just decided to try his hand at composing a piece for real instruments instead of an intro on Mellotrons. Something else new, but it doesn’t quite fit it. The title track, both musically and lyrically, seems to be a follow on to the first. First, Sinfield’s writes about his girlfriend; here, he describes where he hangs out with her with some lovely imagery. The music is the last time KC would call back to the style they established on their first album. This time, the track does justify its length.
I’m glad that I heard their next album before this one. “The Sailor’s Tale”, in retrospect, can be seen as the jumping off point away from their original sound. It occurs to me that the “Larks..” or “Discipline” lineups could have really turned this into a monolith live, but I guess that never happened.
While I don’t agree that this is better than “In the Wake of Poseidon”, it’s certainly listenable. However, even though there isn’t a real band on “..Poseidon”, the album is not as consistent. It sounds that Fripp wasn’t quite sure where the band was going to go. I guess the tour made him to decide to make a clean sweep.
Overall I still like it better than the previous two, but I also think the 2014-2021 band played the music from the three albums best.
Delete