Artist: King Crimson
Release Year: 1973
Rating: 10/10
Once again, Robert Fripp found himself reassembling the shambles of King Crimson, this time with some heavyweight prog alumni. Enter John Wetton from Family on bass and vocals, and Bill Bruford from Yes on drums, along with violinist David Cross and the eccentric Jamie Muir on "percussion and allsorts", as it were. But this is not just a change in personnel-- it's a great alteration in musical direction. The medieval and fantastical airs of old have vanished, along with Peter Sinfield; now, with the more grounded lyrics of Richard Palmer-James, the band zeroes in on a more eclectic mix of hard rock, jazz, and blues, along with various Asian and African influences and whatever madness Jamie Muir insists on injecting on a given day. The playing is even tighter, the jams more focused, the riffs heavier.
The result? A masterpiece. These new faces, it seems, were exactly the breath of fresh air that Crimson needed, and I suspect a lot of it had to do with the stripped-down vision and the staggering versatility of the performers. No longer did Fripp require an entire mini-orchestra to flesh out a song, and so many things in life are easier with fewer cooks in the kitchen.
The first "Larks'" piece is less a song and more a tapestry in multiple movements, almost like a wing of a museum all on its own. It's baffling how we can start out with the mere plinking of a thumb piano and bells, only to crash into the heaviest riffage and bewildering jazz-metal guitar passages Fripp can throw at us. Jamie Muir is all over this one, throwing in so many little effects for just enough texture and whimsy to keep us afloat. Don't discount Wetton, either: this is the guy who drove the "flying brick wall" that Fripp himself admitted to struggling to keep up with in concert, and it's in full force from the start. After this, a quiet, solemn passage from Cross's violin is all that remains, as if the heaviness that came before is dangling over a void on a wispy golden thread. But then, at about 10:10, when that thread suddenly composes itself in a stately declaration, we plunge back into that bubbling cauldron, with the threatening guitar and silk-smooth violin playing us out in equal measure. And this is only track one. Not driving music, but I don't need any distractions when I'm indulging like this.
And all those ballads on the previous albums are lain flat by "Book of Saturday", a drowsy, beautiful, romantic offering that gives us the first taste of Wetton's rich baritone vocals. This is also the first time we hear the softer, sweeter, more personal tone that Fripp adopted for moments like this, and it's fantastic. After this, "Exiles" is an atmospheric and breezy depiction of what you'd suspect is Napoleon on Elba, but no one's sure. All I know is that I can indeed smell and feel the salty breeze, and experience the protagonist's bittersweet longing, and that's enough for me.
But, to ensure we're not bogged down in sentiment, "Easy Money" stomps in with its demented, drooling blues-rock swagger. This song is so much fun all throughout, from the cocky, lascivious verses to the deliberate guitar jam in the middle that meanders here and there while moving upward all the time, like it's making a sort of rhetorical case; to even the little scrapes and rattles and laughs thrown in by Jamie Muir. By the time we mosey on back to the main theme, Fripp and Broof are competing for the prize of "coolest fill", and they both win. I'm just glad they didn't use that other second verse on this album-- if you know, you know.
The vocals are done now, but the journey continues with the best example of that quintessential King Crimson motif of tension-and-release. "The Talking Drum" builds so much anticipation with that oscillating bassline and that meandering violin solo that never resolves, instead continuing to buzz around our heads like an insistent tsetse fly. When the guitar finally kicks in, the tension is almost teeth-grittingly painful, like a psychic abscess about to burst-- and when it does, we crash into the headbanging second part of "Larks' Tongues". It's as close to an instant classic as you get in the prog world, so aggressively triumphant in its serrated guitar attacks and slamming riffs and thrumming bass pulses, yet still leaving room for David Cross to throw in a searing violin solo that caps everything off like a gold leaf on a fine cut of steak. And if you've never seen the video of Robert Fripp's wife Toyah demonstrating how one can indeed dance in 5/4, go check it out, so that you can silence any of your friends who complain about such petty things.
I hope I've heaped enough praise on this album by now, and I hope I've done so with all the appropriate metaphors. This is like stumbling upon a beautiful, ornate atlas of an uncharted continent, and finding that that atlas is also a gripping novel AND a delicious meal. It's the ultimate refinement of all I ever wanted from literate rock music, and it's been my favorite King Crimson release since I first heard it twenty years ago.
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