Strawbs (UK)
Grave New World (1972)
Genres:rock, progressive rock, folk-rock
Since so many seems to feel that this concept album is Strawbs best effort I was taken back a little by the fact that it isn’t as good as I believed – for example I find the “Hero and Heroine” album to be better. Strawbs plays a hybrid of rock, progressive and folk, what some call folk-rock, others call it progressive folk or something similar. The concept of “Grave New World” is the journey of life, a voyage from birth to death. A concept that isn’t helped by the fact that the glue, the walls of the castle; the short songs that are supposed to carry the concept and music, develop it and bring it all together; these walls are just not standing. They are so outrageous indifferent, real non-sayers. I’m talking about the likes of “Hey Little Man” x2 and “On Growing Older”. Good songs include the title-track, the heavy and progressive “Tomorrow” and the bitter “Heavy Disguise”. It’s a sad fact that the second half of the album is extremely poor, here we only find one good song in “Tomorrow” and a decent end named “The Journey’s End”, a song that ends a somewhat tortured life-story. And don’t even mention the bonus tracks; worse are really, really, really hard to find. There are better albums by the Strawbs out there, get them instead or at least first.
There are a lot of albums out there that are neither good or bad, and this got to be the most decent of them all. The music on “Grave New World” is mainly acoustic folk-rock (albeit with organ and mellotron), owing as much to the American tradition as to the British. Both music and vocals (by several band members) are decent on most of the songs; it sounds okay but it does not exactly send shivers down your spine. The only tracks worth mentioning are “Heavy Disguise”, a good track enhanced by the guest appearance of a brass section, “Tomorrow”, the most varied and dynamic track of the record, and the bonus tracks. The bonus tracks stand out because they sound as if they were composed by your local pub band. They are bad even by bonus track standards (the hand clap does certainly not help). Decent, but not that exciting.