Top 5 of 1971!!

Yup, we're starting this over again!  Back when I did my Anniversary Article, I focused on who both prog rock and hard rock were evolving, and this Top 5 reflects that!  While Black Sabbath, with their detuned guitars, and Deep Purple, who cemented their Mark II sound, were considered, they couldn't quite make it in as those albums also have some lackluster tracks.  Remember: a few great songs do not a great album make.  As always, I couldn't listen to everything, and this is super subjective, but these are my Top 5 albums of 1971!

5. Jethro Tull - Aqualung

This band has always been on the weird side, even among their prog rock contemporaries.  Featuring curious folk melodies and quirky lyrics, this album squeezes into the Top 5 primarily because the songs feel very well thought out.  For all their fanciful strangeness, these songs are exactly what they need to be, and the title track is a classic for these same reasons.

4. Uriah Heep - Look At Yourself

When I first listened to this, I thought it was alright, but upon revisiting both of their 1971 albums, this one stood out as the stronger of the two, mainly because it had a more focused rock approach.  The title track is a great start and "July Morning" really builds well, and the rest of the album just has the right touches to help put this one in the Top 5.

3. Led Zeppelin - IV

I've been relistening to a lot of Zeppelin lately, and as cliche as it may be, I do think this is their best album.  Not only featuring some of their most iconic tracks like "Black Dog" and "Stairway to Heaven," I was more recently blown away with the droning blues song "When the Levee Breaks."  I know I had heard it before, but this last time, it stayed in my mind much longer than I expected!

2. Pink Floyd - Meddle

It took them more than a few albums, but Pink Floyd finally pull themselves together and make some great music. While there are a few goofy tracks here and there, they arrive at excellence with the dark and brooding "One of These Days" and the epic underwater journey "Echoes."  Absolutely beautiful stuff.

1. Yes - The Yes Album & Fragile

I know this is cheating again, like I did with my Top 5 of 1985, but when my favorite band brings out two incredible albums in a year, this is just gonna happen!  Seriously, though, this is some of their best material.  Getting Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman on board expanded their sound considerably.  While I do think The Yes Album is probably better as a whole, Fragile does have my favorite Yes song "Heart of the Sunrise," so it's a close match.  In any case, Yes is certainly the best of the year, and I'm not ashamed to say it!

Retro Reviews - February 2026 Part Two!!

So here's the follow up from the last article, featuring three returning bands, and this time, all four are from 1971 to help me work out my Top 5.  Unfortunately, I don't think any of these will be making it as they are a clunky group of albums.  I know I may be tipping my hand early here, but nothing here was particularly mind-blowing, despite their various efforts.  Still, they're interesting albums and worth giving a listen, if only to show how each band has changed and will change.

Caravan - In The Land Of Grey And Pink

After checking out their debut and enjoying the follow up, it's finally time to check out their critically acclaimed third album.  At this point, the band was eager to get some attention outside their fanbase, and keyboardist Richard Sinclair brought some stronger pop music vibes to the songwriting.  While it's a decent collection of songs, I feel like something got lost in the shuffle as a consequence.

First off, the production is a major step up, sounding rather quite clean compared to their muddier previous albums.  However, the songs themselves are much more straight forward.  The album opens with "Golf Girl," which is about how the bassist met his girlfriend and honestly sounds bland, even with a trombone playing the lead melody.  "Winter Wine" is an improvement, letting the band jam around quite a bit, but then they get strange with the 7/8 "Love to Love You (and Tonight Pigs Will Fly)."  It's like they tried to blend prog with pop, and I don't know if it really works.  The title trick is alright, full of folky nostalgia for the band's hometown.  The album then closes with a 22 minute epic titled "Nine Feet Underground."  While it certainly has some interesting sections, I don't know if the flow is quite perfect as they journey through them.  It makes me think of Procol Harum's "In Held Twas In I" at times, but much more instrumental.  It's not bad, and probably the closest the band gets to the weirdness of If I Could Do It Again... that I liked.

While it's not a bad collection of songs, the spontaneity of the previous album is missing.  Perhaps the band wasn't as interested in psychedelic spaces this time around, shifting into their idea of a pop rock sound with some very safe song structures.  I liked "Winter Wine" and "Nine Feet Underground" the most, as they took me on more of a sonic journey than the others.  Maybe I need to listen to it more, but this is a let down compared to what I heard.

Wishbone Ash - Pilgrimage

While the band did well with their first album, they were pretty rushed to put out a second and relied on some older material they had written before but couldn't fit into the first.  I enjoyed their debut as a decent set of jammy blues rock, the band takes a much bigger dive into jazz-fusion.

Jazz was certainly a part of their sound before this, but this is stepping away from the likes of Cream in favor of something like King Crimson or Colosseum.  This is made very clear with the first two tracks "Vas Dis" and "The Pilgrim" being some very interesting journeys, and featuring some very technical playing.  Steve Upton in particular gives his drum kit quite the pounding.  It is also worth noting that these two songs don't have any lyrics, but instead feature some interesting vocals anyway.  "Vas Dis" goes for this rambling scat melodies, while "The Pilgrim" has some Yes-like ahs that fit the moodier tone.  There are two other instrumentals, but they're short and don't add much.  "Alone" was part of a longer song, but they decided to just include a section of it that's a meditative jam, and "Lullaby" has some appropriate sentimentality with the guitar harmonies.  "Valediction" is also in the soft rock style, though the lyrics are on the forlorn side.  Of course, the blues rock hasn't been completely abandoned, as "Jail Bait" is very straight-ahead with its structure (until the sudden reggae section at the end), and the album ends with "Where Were You Tomorrow," a live blues jam that goes over ten minutes.

I don't know if this is better or worse than their first, as it is kind of a different animal.  The one before was more of a blues-rock album and had some pretty good stuff, but here, I think the jazzy songs are the better ones, as the blues rock feels a little bland in comparison.  In any case, the band remains solid, featuring their slick guitar licks and harmonies and backed by a very driven rhythm section.  I understand their next album Argus is the one everyone praises, but I'll have to wait until next year to get to that!

Hawkwind - X In Search of Space

After getting through their first album, which was quite the unusual trip, I was feeling a bit hesitant about their follow up.  Fortunately, this one ended up being much more music focused, letting their synthy noise-makers be the spice to their spacey jams.

Things kick off with the 15-minute uptempo epic "You Shouldn't Do That."  It takes a minute to get into the music, but once it does, the chugging rhythms do a solid job of setting the tone and letting the band just mess around creatively for most of the runtime.  While the lyrics are more angst driven, they have this overlapping style that flows well with the song.  However, the album kind of descends from there.  While there are more decent space rock jams, they don't feel quite as ambitious, though. "Masters of the Universe" feels the most organized of the songs.  "We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago" shakes things up by being more of a folky jam on acoustic guitars, but the rest pretty much stick to more mid-tempo songs that roll along.

This is a definite improvement, as the band is clearly focusing on creating a musical space rather than a noisy, ambient one.  I admit it's hard to know how much of this is intentional and how much is just improvised playing that's loosely organized, but I suppose that's space rock for you.  At the very least, this is much closer to what I was expecting with the band.  I don't know if I've heard anything great yet, but I can see this band growing on me the more I listen to them.

Electric Light Orchestra - The Electric Light Orchestra

Before becoming pop rock legends, the Electric Light Orchestra started as more of a chamber pop group, inspired by some of the symphonic songs of the Beatles.  Largely focused around Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood, and Bev Bevan, their debut is a very confusing album, as they haven't quite worked out how to make their blend of ideas work smoothly yet.

The opening track "10538 Overture" is a decent start, featuring a solid riff and backed by the orchestrations well.  You can definitely hear their later sound in this one, as well as on "Nillie Takes Her Bow" and "Mr. Radio."  However, the album is uneven with its shifting styles.  The Beatles' influence is strongly felt on "Look At Me Now" and "Queen of the Hours," and they have some instrumentals that feel like movie soundtrack pieces, full of drama and noise, but they don't hold my interest very well.  The production isn't really helping them.  Maybe having different instruments panned far left and right might have sounded impressive at the time, but it just feels jarring now, and there are spots where things get muddy.

The one thing that holds the album together is this strong sense of melodrama.  You can tell the artists were dedicated to an idea, but hadn't quite figured out how to make it work.  Blending orchestral arrangements with typical pop and rock structures weren't necessarily new, but I don't think anyone quite embraced them as much as ELO was trying to here.  I did like "10538 Overture" and "1st Movement (Jumping Biz)," even if that second track was derivative of "Classical Gas" by Mason Williams.  Overall, this album is a mixed bag, but I'm determined to dig through their discography as I'm confident there will be some great tracks soon enough.

Retro Reviews - February 2026 Part One!

Now that 2025 is finally out of the way, I can focus on a new set of Top 5 lists for this year.  However, in order to check out some stuff for my 1971 list, I figured I should squeeze in a handful of debut albums in advance.  The first three bands all have albums in 1971, but I'll get to those next time.  Here's what I've been checking out for the start of the new year!

Caravan - Caravan

Formed by remaining members of The Wilde Flowers, and borrowing equipment from their country mates Soft Machine, Caravan had their humble start with this debut album in 1969.  While I definitely enjoyed their follow up from 1970, going back to this one shows them still forming their sound and clearly hoping for some pop success.

The songs are much more conventional here, with many of them featuring standard verse and chorus structures.  While they aren't bad songs, they do just kinda carry on in a bit of a lazy, laid back.  The opener "Place of My Own," "Love Song with Flute," and the nine-minute closer "Where But For Caravan Would I" all sound the most like their jazz fusion-y second album, so they stand out the most to me, but there were a few other good moments.  "Ride" gets some decent, meditative sections and "Magic Man" is a good little ballad.  However, other tracks like get a little too weird.  "Policeman" feels like their attempt at a quirky Beetles-like song, and "Cecil Rons" has some jarring repetitive chords and aggressive growling vocals, of all things!

So over all, it's a decent set of songs with more than a few clunky moments, though this is expected of a band who is on the cusp of something greater.  Sometimes it just takes some experience before a band really coalesces into themselves.  I don't know what I was expecting necessarily when I started listening to this, but it served as a decent foundation for them to build on for future releases.

Wishbone Ash - Wishbone Ash

This is a band I've heard about, but had never really gotten around to until now.  They are best known for having two guitarists, a style that would be very influential on later metal bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.  Opening for Deep Purple helped them get attention from MCA Records, and by the end of 1970, they released this debut album.  Clearly built on the British blues rock scene, this some decent rock with a very jam-friendly vibe.

While bands like Cream, The Yardbirds, and perhaps even Black Sabbath's first album come to mind, but the double-guitar work really sets them apart from those bands.  Another stand-out element is the very clean production, allowing you to hear those crisp guitar harmonies that really are the highlight of the album.  Even bassist Martin Turner joins Andy Powell and Ted Turner on some of the melodies, creating a powerful sense of unity.  Meanwhile Steve Upton gets plenty of work out of his drums, find all kinds of gaps to get in a fill.  Overall, there's a solid, upbeat vibe to their songs, at least for the first half, with "Blind Eye" and "Lady Whiskey" bringing a lot of boogie.

The second half has the band really pushing into psychedelic rock, featuring only two tracks that are both over ten minutes long.  "Handy" starts with an extended bass solo before settling into a blues rock groove that felt like a genuine ancestor to Seven Planets before reaching a rather jazzy ending.  "Phoenix" was much the same, starting with some laid back jamming before turning up the energy with a swing step.  I definitely like the second half more, as I think it had more identity and featured the players at their best as they jammed away.  Overall, it was a pretty fun album, banging my head through it all.  For a debut album, there's quite a bit going on, and I look forward to where the band goes from here.

Hawkwind - Hawkwind

Another debut album!  Hawkwind is another band I had heard about, but never listened to until now.  I mostly knew them as a band that leaned in "space rock" long after the 60s (and had Lemmy on bass for a bit before they kicked him out, which caused him to start Motorhead).  But I'm getting ahead of myself here.  Their first album is considered an early space rock landmark, but honestly, I don't think it's aged that well.

I get that the point of psychedelic rock is the vibes and atmosphere instead of having thought-out orchestrations, but there are times where this album seems to revel in musical noise that occasionally has some rock jams in between.  A great example is "Seeing It as You Really Are," where there are so many sound effects and strange noises going on that it overwhelms what might have been a decent track.  Another example is "The Reason Is," which turns out to be just a few minutes of jarring ambiance.  Fortunately, there are a few songs to enjoy here.  The opener "Hurry on Sundown" has a folky twang coming from a 12-string guitar, making for a very acoustic-heavy rock jam.  "Be Yourself" has some rather King Crimson rhythms at the start before settling into a decent groove.  The closer "Mirror of Illusion" is probably the best track, as Dave Brock's voice really carries the song through a pretty solid jam, featuring plenty of solos.  I guess this song is what I was expecting the whole album to be like.

After listening to the whole thing, I get the feeling that the band were more interested in freaking out the listener than focusing on the music.  The descending warp in "Paranoia Part 1" in particular seems designed to make the listener to panic, thinking there is something wrong with their player.  Perhaps innovative and bizarre for its time, but listening to this retroactively on a computer, it feels just tacky.  Even though there are a few decent sections, this feels like one of those "you had to be there" kind of albums.

Deep Purple - Fireball

Finally, something that isn't a debut album!  I've been slowly working my way through Deep Purple's catalog, and I can see why Mark II is so important to the band's history, as I'm finding quite a bit to like.  This one has another decent bunch of songs, but listening to this retroactively, it's hard not to feel like this is just preparation for something greater.

I think a good way to describe this album is to say that the band is coming to terms with their new sound.  While In Rock was a massive burst of power, here they are grappling and controlling that power into something more organized.  They also wander into elements of space rock here and there, exploring the dynamics of their sound.  "No No No" and "Fools" have some stark transitions between hard riffs and mellower sections, but none of it feels jarring as they make these switches with a confident ease.  "The Mule" also has this droning quality that pushes the listener into a very strange space (though I do think the version on Made In Japan is better, naturally).  Still, there's plenty of rockin', with the opening title track not wasting anyone's time with its double-kicking bass drum energy, and "No One Came" has this pulsing drive from Roger Glover that keeps things moving.  "Anyone's Daughter" is a curious attempt at a joke song, but it's hard to know how much of the band was into the idea.

This is an improvement over In Rock, as the band is a little more confident in what they're doing, not really having to prove themselves as much.  However, like I said, with Machine Head coming after this one, it's hard not to feel like this one falls short of that excellent album.  Perhaps it's unfair to do that.  In any case, they are really becoming a strong unit with some solid (if quickly written) songs, proving that the switch to Mark II was worth it for both the band and the listener.