review by thomas

The opening cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Spirits In the Night” was not a bad song but I don’t think it fits that good with the rest of the album. We are then treated with some good and energetic songs in form of the instrumental fusion “Countdown”, the Mann-styled heavy progressive “Time Is Right” and “Crossfade”, another good instrumental song. MMEB were – in the 1973-75 phase at least – a very instrumental band at times and they often did it good. I don’t mean that the vocals were bad or unnecessary, but it was in the instrumental songs and parts that the band really melted together and became a band. And on this record half the songs are instrumentals; besides the already mentioned ones we have the title track, a good song too and then we have the closing track which I find really uninteresting. The other cover on “Nightingales and Bombers” is “Visionary Mountains” and like “Spirits In the Night” it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the material. The short “Fat Nelly” is one of the best tracks MMEB ever did. It includes a strange bass pattern, good organ, excellent percussion work and guitar. The whole album is jazzier then before but in no way is this a bad thing, since it’s not overdone, you can still hear their sound. The fusion thing that MMEB often flirted with is still here and strong, in particular in the instrumentals. And again an album without a Dylan cover! Actually this is not completely true; “Quit Your Low Down Ways” where originally included on the US release. On the remastered 1999 CD version of the album the song is included as a bonus track. It’s a very good version and would have fitted better on the album instead of one of the covers that were included.