Album title: Second Album
Artist: Curved Air
Nationality: English
Label: Warner Bros
Chronology: Second
Grade: B
Tracklisting: Young Mother/ Back Street Luv/ Jumbo/ You Know/ Puppets/ Everdance/ Bright Summer’s Day/ Piece of Mind
Comments: Fades in on buzzy organ as “Young Mother” opens the album, rising guitar climbing through the mix before the voice of Sonja Kristina takes the vocal, very clear and very lovely. Darryl Way’s violin takes command and it’s a nice start for sure, some really sweet arpeggios as it fades out and into “Back Street Luv”, which was a top five single for Curved Air, and, I think, their only one, therefore their most famous song. Love the powerful organ intro. Yeah but after that it’s nothing special. Not sure why this became a hit. Much better is “Jumbo” with its orchestral backing and soft piano, a waltzy ballad but that’s let down by the next track, a pretty average sixties-pop-sounding “You Know”, but “Puppets” is better, piano-driven with a sense of Carole King about it.
More uptempo and bouncy is “Everdance”, on which Way breaks out the violin almost as a fiddle but again the song is nothing to get excited about, and the less said about the woeful “Bright Summer’s Day ‘68” the better. That leaves us with one final track, and it should be an epic, running for over twelve minutes: it will either save or damn this album, but to be honest it’s going to take a lot to achieve the former. Starts well anyway with a powerful dramatic intro, mournful violin and a crooning vocal from Sonja. Kind of reminds me a little of later ELO, though I could do without the rapid-fire singing; don’t see the point in it.
The piano interlude is very nice, and in fact leads into a pretty sweet long instrumental section, which has a little of jazz in it, but not enough to annoy me. Sonja comes back in with the vocal, but she’s not singing this time but speaking, kind of like poetry. I guess it works though I’m not sure what the idea is. She lapses back into song soon enough, then fades back out again to allow the boys to take control, this time on bubbly organ with whirly sound effects and a nice steady bass line. So does it save the album? Very nearly.
Favourite track(s): Young Mother, Jumbo, Puppets, Piece of Mind
Least favourite track(s): You Know, Bright Summer Day ‘68
Overall impression: A serious disappointment after the mostly decent debut. This is poor, people, poor. Almost pulled it out of the bag right at the end, but even that pretty majestic closer can’t paper over the cracks of such a weak and ineffectual album.
Personal Rating:2.0
Legacy Rating: 2.0
Final Rating 2.0