 | Asylum (1971)Genres: progressive pop, progressive rock, canterbury |
review by thomas
A very nice little gem from 1971 with plenty of swirling organ, acoustic guitar, some flute and orchestration. Some songs are very relaxed and laid back in style, almost Canterbury songs with obvious jazz inclinations. Other songs have more heavy biting guitar and a more aggressive out-tone; most songs though, have both. The swirling organ is omnipresent throughout the album and never bad.
Cressida is often compared to the so-called mellotron bands like Spring and Fantasy, but in fact the organist doesn’t play mellotron at all – at least not on this release, but then again they did have help from an orchestra – and to me the band seems to be more in style with the Canterbury sound of Caravan. For instance Cressida also makes use of humorous or strange lyrics (as in the lovely “Goodbye Post Office Tower Goodbye”) very much like, albeit not to the extremity of, Caravan and musically “Asylum” is in many ways very similar to Caravan’s “In the Land of Grey and Pink” from the same year. They have one leg standing in the Beatles and Love sounding sixties and one in the new and yet still to take shape progressive seventies, with a heavy dose of something that I believe wasn’t yet invented as a term: Canterbury. The singer has this lovely, relaxed moody voice but he is still capable of handling more aggressive parts as well.
I’m so very happy that I purchased this album (it was a gamble). If you like me haven’t yet hit it off with Caravan, or maybe don't like them at all, it’s nice to know from this album that there may still be lots of good stuff in the Canterbury and related scenes.
