 | A Ballad of a Peaceful Man (1971)Genres: rock, proto prog |
review by thomas
I am not very happy with this album, an album that the majority seems to regard as a classic. Gravy Train plays a kind of flute-rock with power riffs - of that kind these riffs are that they weren’t good the first time around and believe me when I say we haven’t heard the last of ‘em. They keep on turning up here and there in music history - from the guitar and flute (yes, early Tull comes to mind, though Tull does it miles better) but the bulk of the songs are of the tiresome kind because it has been done before and been done better, much better that is.
None of the instruments actually sounds good, they all sound rather uninteresting to me and in fact I find Gravy Train much sharper when they play more quietly or acoustically, this is true about “Messenger”, “Jule’s Delight” and the first half of the title-track. I also prefer the singer in this mood rather than in the hard rocking mood. This is however nothing they do that often, the dull rock-riffing-gone-wrong sadly dominates the album. The songs foundation when stripped bare seems to be blues-rock or even boogie, at least the harder songs, but this is after close examination and only the basic foundation, the sound as a whole is rock.
Overall this album comes out poorly and I find it to be grossly overrated.
