GREENSLADE

Greenslade’s most successful album, plus previously unreleased live sessions.

Released in 1974 and the only one of Greenslade’s albums to chart, Spyglass Guest might not be burdened with the overweening ambition of a Tales From Topographic Oceans, but for fans of virtuoso musicianship allied to decent songwriting, there’s much to enjoy.

There was certainly no doubting the band’s pedigree, with keyboardist Dave Greenslade and bassist Tony Reeves both coming from Colosseum, and Andrew McCulloch having drummed on King Crimson’s Lizard. But perhaps Greenslade’s most intriguing asset was second keyboardist and singer Dave Lawson, who had previously been with the lesser known but excellent Samurai, and would go on play the ARP synth in Star Wars’ cantina scene and arrange the strings on Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting. Lawson brought both a playfulness and an edge to the band’s double-keyboard line-up that stopped them from tipping over into muso worthiness.

Lawson’s compositions on Spyglass Guest stand out by dint of their contrasting dynamics. Little Red Fry Up is woozy jazz rock with creepy stereo vocals to match its farmyard horror lyric, and it also features a piercingly bluesy guitar solo for the first time on a Greenslade album. The close harmony vocals of Rainbow could be 10cc after a night on the tiles, while Lawson sounds like a whisky-soaked Jon Anderson on the woman-done-me-wrong

Rhodes confection of Red Light.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, Dave Greenslade’s songs tend to be more recognisably ‘progressive’ – in fact, Spirit Of The Dance is practically a blueprint for the bouncy harlequin fripperies of certain neo-prog bands. Joie De Vivre starts churchy but builds to an uplifting conclusion, while the band let rip on Melancholic Race in a flurry of synth and organ chops.

For existing fans, the second disc of BBC live sessions from 1974 is a treat, and shows what great players these guys were. Highlights include a gutbusting version of Sundance from their debut album, and an extended, bass-jamming take of Melancholic Race.