Red (1974)

Artist: King Crimson 
Release Year: 1974

Rating: 9/10

Track Listing: 1) Red; 2) Fallen Angel; 3) One More Red Nightmare; 4) Providence; 5) Starless.

And then there were three.  Wait-- wrong band.

But yes, David Cross is out now, and it's just Fripp, Wetton, and Broof to complete what would turn out to be the swan song of 70s Crim.  The result is the most erudite madness, or the spookiest intellectualism, of this incarnation.  

Some of this music had existed before the album was cut, but had been in constant evolution as live material.  Fortunately, the band managed to wrap everything into a tight final form before heading into the studio.  The one exception is "Providence", another live jam that was probably included to fill space, but fortunately, this paranoid jam fits right in with the rest of the album.  Cross was still around to lend his eerie, creaking violin, which sounds like an evil spirit creeping up on its prey.  By the time the others really let loose, it's like the walls closing in, and it's mostly worth the wait.

I don't know if I love the title track as much as I'm supposed to, but it is certainly great.  It's a primal, angry, guitar riff-centered piece that suggests images of bloodshed and war: deep-seated fixtures of the human psyche, and red indeed.

"Fallen Angel" is a gorgeous-- and surprisingly human-- ballad about a street urchin's brother dying in a knife fight.  Imagine that as a King Crimson storyline!  Even the moments that would come off as melodramatic in the hands of a lesser band (e.g., the "life expiring in the snow" bit) are wound into the composition with care and control.  And forgive me, but between the fugue-like melody and the oboe accompaniment, I can even hear some of this as an influence on Seal's "Kiss from a Rose" twenty years later.  Am I off the mark?

"One More Red Nightmare" is phenomenal too.  The lyrics tell an exciting enough story, and the heavy, jazz-funk instrumental is an almost cinematic journey through mad, panicked hallucinations that seem to build eternally.  There's also this wonderfully crazed wah-wah effect that somebody is using...I assume it's Fripp, but who knows.   And hey, we even get Ian McDonald and Mel Collins in the studio again as guest stars!  The early days come full circle.

And I don't know if "Starless" is the greatest King Crimson song ever, but I can't be happier with the way the 70s KC chose to end their career.  This and "21st Century Schizoid Man" are the two songs that every student of rock music must hear: the first for the historical significance, but this one for a sort of "King Crimson in microcosm" experience.  It's a masterpiece in three movements: first, a weeping, poetic ballad featuring some of John Wetton's finest vocal work; second, a minimalistic, two-note guitar motif over bass and percussion that turn steadily more impatient as the tension rises; and third, an eruption into jazz-fusion hysterics, as if the inner demons the band has been nursing this whole album have finally burst free.  And then, when the final reprise begins, it's a thing of sublime satisfaction-- nay, perfection.  This is the only adequate finale to the old King Crimson: epic, ominous, cerebral, sprawling, cathartic, and staggering in its ambition and execution.  There was no better way to close the book.

Ultimately, there's not too much difference between the sound of the previous album and this one, but there's more unity and deliberate intention here.  The cohesive feeling of bitter darkness and danger is what makes this album work so well.  After this, Robert Fripp would wander off into an isolated spiritual phase before returning to the world through a solo career, and I have to wonder whether he'd seen the same writing on the wall for bloated, expensive progressive suites then as we see in hindsight today.  Regardless, the call of the terrible Crim would not let him rest for long, and the Eighties would see a mutation to suit the changing times.