King Crimson
“A group forms in service of an aim. Its effectiveness is governed primarily by the clarity if its aim, the depth of commitment by and between the members, the degree to which the group’s action reflects a larger social/cultural usefulness or necessity, and the quality of its work. When the aim has been served, or the commitment discharged, any group worthy of the name disbands. Otherwise, it becomes an institution and its members suffer the ossification which accompanies institutionalization.” – Robert Fripp
“*Wank*” – Every
member of King Crimson ever
“How many Robert Fripps does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Five! One to screw it in, one to make sure nobody takes pictures of the act, one to tell all the onlookers that they're here to talk about changing a light bulb, not Discipline and that he thought this was a university light bulb, one to perform an unlistenable 30-minute improv solo about the light bulb as a symbol of the life of man (in seven parts), and one to hold up a poster of himself and masturbate all over it.” – Mark Prindle
Albums Reviewed:
In The Court Of The Crimson King
King Crimson is not a band. King Crimson is a guy. While they started out as a semi-democratic entity, by the time they had more or less invented progressive rock with their debut in 1969, everyone who had anything to do with that album and was not named Robert Fripp left, leaving ol’ Fripperlips, by default, as the unquestioned, tyrannical leader of King Crimson. And he ran with it. After leading his band of replacement hacks into ass-poor jazz-noodling suckitude within two short years, he fired everyone. Then he reformed the band two years later as a frighteningly mean and powerful prog-metal force (and the singular influence for Tool and other like-minded bands), but dissolved them two years later. Then he reformed the band again in the early eighties as a hyper-complicated, Talking Heads-influenced new wave-prog hybrid, but dissolved them three years later. Then he reformed the band again in the mid-nineties as not-at-all interesting amalgamation/self-cannibalization of the two previous incarnations, and continues to record and tour with that version to this day.
Therefore, any discussion of “King Crimson” as a whole begins and ends with a discussion of Robert Fripp, and any discussion of their music must be localized within the different versions of his band, about which I will go into detail during the reviews. Also, the only thing I will say about the band’s “lineup” is that it originally consisted of Fripp on guitar, Ian McDonald on saxes, flutes, mellotrons, and other assorted doohickies, Greg Lake (before he went off to make an ass of himself for the remainder of his career) on bass and vocals, and Michael Giles on drums. Obviously, the lineup changes of this band are far too numerous to bother with in the intro, and, again, they don’t matter, because the story here is Fripp, and my mixed feelings toward the guy. On the one hand, he was, and is, a total douche. He insults his fans when they ask him for his autograph, is almost obsessive-compulsive about not having his picture taken, sits hunched over in a chair while performing and does not move, and will gladly spend an hour of your time, both on record and at a concert you paid to attend, wanking about and producing hideous, unlistenable, “avant-garde” noise. To make a gross oversimplification, he’s an asshole who think he’s better than anyone else and doesn’t give a shit.
However, sometimes it’s good to be an asshole, and one thing you will never find in the winding, twisting mess that is the King Crimson catalog is pandering. Robert Fripp makes the music he wants to make, and simply does not care what you (or I…especially I) think. This may (and often does) include non-musical wank nothingness, but it also may occasionally include some of the most groundbreaking, startling music ever put to tape, especially if you’re talking about the ’73-’74 band, which just rules my ass all the way to next week. See, Robert Fripp is a fantastically talented guitarist, capable of lightning fast, technically jawdropping arpeggios on the one hand and fat, menacing riffing on the other. He just has his, you know...tendencies. And he can’t write songs either (at all), so other people generally have to do that for him. The quality of King Crimson music, essentially, depends on three things, all of equal importance: the talent and creativity of his current sidemen (Boz Burrell or John Wetton? Ian Wallace or Bill Bruford?), how forward-thinking his band is at the time (are they ahead of their time, with the times, or behind the times? King Crimson has been all three), and how much of a douche Fripp feels like being (should I focus my talents on creating something memorable, or should I just jerk off for an hour?). All three of these things differ wildly from era to era, and the third differs wildly not only from album to album, but often from song to song on the same album.
Needless to say, King Crimson’s recording career is frustrating and inconsistent. The potential of the band is often very, very high, but the actual results are there only infrequently and, after all is said and done, there are a mere four King Crimson albums (In the Court of the Crimson King, Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Red, Absent Lovers) that I would say are necessities. If you want to dig deeper, be my guest, but bear in mind you’ll only be getting weaker versions of and/or variations on songs and themes present on those four records. Crim has also released too many live albums to even count, but I’ve taken the easy way out, purchased the only one deemed necessary by the majority (Absent Lovers), and fucked the rest because I’m deathly poor. If you want me to review Earthbound or VROOM VROOM or Epitaph or THRaKaTTaK or The Night Watch or B’Boom or USA or Heavy ConstruKction or The Great Deceiver or Robert Fripp’s Taking a Two-Hour Shit Onstage and Recording it for Posterity (Whoever Posterity is), send it to me, because frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn.
Also, their album covers rule.
And, onto the reviews!
In The Court Of The Crimson King (1969)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “21st
Century Schizoid Man”
Old review’s gone. Kaput!
Finito! Sayonara! Why?
It sucks, that’s why. Have you read
that thing? God, what piece of ass
reviews I wrote the first couple of months this site was in operation. They read like a functionally retarted
pre-schooler wrote them. “OHHH! THAT SONG’S COOL! EEEEE!!!”
Plus, I
hadn’t heard any other Kris Kringle albums when I wrote that bad boy. I said “21st Century Schizoid Man”
was my favorite Crimson song ever. Sure,
the song rules, but I hadn’t even
heard any material from the ’73-’74 band yet, which is like saying what your
favorite Rolling Stones song is without hearing anything from between 1968 and
1972. It’s simply idiotic and irresponsible. And so here we are, and it’s not like my
opinion regarding ICOCK (Oh, I’m so
mature…) has changed any since I wrote the old review. It’s still the same as every other web reviewer on the planet. The record more or less invented many of the
conventions of the early-70’s progressive rock scene, and holds up today better
than 99% of that genre’s albums.
Four-fifths of it, ranging from mean proto-noise rock to flute-tinged
ballad loveliness to gorgeous, affecting mellotron epics, is absolutely
brilliant and should be heard by every single person on this planet who gives
even half a shit about good rock
music. One-fifth (or one quarter, if you
go by time taken up instead of number of songs) is utterly unlistenable
bullshit, and provides your first glimpse of the fact that Robert Fripp is a
giant douche who gets off on ruining even his most brilliant albums with long
stretches of go-nowhere dicking that no one with fully functioning ears will
ever want to hear. End of review. Now, I’m gonna go have another
…
OK, so I
drank the last one like an hour ago, I guess.
I might as well write a longer review now, eh? OK. So
what strikes me about this record, in relation to the rest of the King Crimson
catalog, is the songs. With few exceptions, Robert Fripp simply cannot write good songs, or at least
traditional songs centered around vocal melodies and hooks. He’ll churn one out every now and then, but
it’s a rare occasion indeed (and it’s probably a good bet to assume someone
else wrote the melody, anyway), and so the fact that every track on this
record, excepting the aforementioned go-nowhere dicking, contains a superb hook is very, very
interesting. But it’s understandable,
see? Because Fripp didn’t actually write any of it! He’s just another member of the band at this
point, and it’s not until later that his name becomes synonymous with King
Crimson. Ian McDonald (later
of…Foreigner! Yee-hah!) plays all the
horns, woodwinds, and mellotrons on this record and, apparently, has a huge hand in the songwriting (though you
wouldn’t know it from Foreigner’s songs).
Even though Emerson, Lake, and Palmer suck a fat one,
And WHAT
songs they are! “21st Century
Schizoid Man,” after beginning the record with 30 seconds of “machine starting
up” sounds that Tool have totally ripped off like five times, is an absolutely mean noise-rock guitar/sax/mellotron
piece of hibbity-jibbity that totally kicks my ass with its Greg Lake
fuzzed-out distorto-vocals before going into a mid-song instrumental section
that shows just how vibrant and alive progressive rock could be when practiced
by talented individuals and constructed with sharpness, clarity, purpose, and
care. The song rocks viciously, and is still my favorite King
Crimson moment when one doesn’t count the ’73-’74 band (who just totally fucking rule). The following “I Talk to the Wind” is just as
pretty as “Schizoid” is frightening, and finds
Because
good fucking GOD does “Moonchild” suck.
I know I’m not really breaking any new ground here by saying “Moonchild”
is a pathetic pile of baboon droppings, but I don’t know if the intensity of its sucking has yet to be
fully discussed. After about ninety
seconds of quiet decentness that fools you into thinking the track might be an
actual song, it quickly degenerates into absolute nothingness, the kind of
nothingness that, by minute 8, has you questioning your will to live. You know what it sounds like? It sounds like Robert Fripp was alone in the
studio one night, after Ian McDonald had left the Mellotron plugged in, and he
just, like, got drunk and hit the keys randomly with a stick for ten minutes,
and accidentally left the “record” button on as well. Then, as a joke, he decided to stick his drunken stick-bashing onto the record
between “Epitaph” and the title track precisely because he’s a giant asshole
who wanted to assert creative control over the group even though McDonald and
And so, because I can’t end a review of one of the 5-10 greatest progressive rock albums of all time with a 200 word discussion of the badness of “Moonchild,” let me reiterate once again that this album is an absolute necessity for anyone with even a passing interest in the genre. It’s alternately mean and pretty, mellow and bombastic, solemn and stirring. It basically contains everything that can be good about progressive rock. Except for “Moonchild.”
David Dickson (ddickso2@uccs.edu) writes:
Now now now now now, SOMEBODY
has to stand up in defense of
"Moonchild." This "song" is an interlude. Like,
it functions as a
nice calming breather in between all the bombast and orchestration.
All I have to say is this, Brad: if you can call the first ten
minutes (TEN!) of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond"
"mindblowing" (CHRIST!
Most of it is Dave Gilmour recycling quiet slow blues licks while
half-asleep! START THE VOCALS ALREADY! GAH!!), you can last through
this "collosal waste of time." It's like one of those free-jazz
fusion things Miles Davis was wont to do at the time, except it's
meant to be calming and sooooothing, not "FREAK OUT, MAN! REVEL IN
OUR OUTRAGEOUS DISSONANT BWEES!!" that they would later indulge in on
Starless and Thrakattak.
Actually, to tell the truth, if "In the Court of the Crimson King"
didn't come on RIGHT at the end of "Moonchild", jumping us out of our
seats with the first orchestral crash, I'D call the song a piece of
crap too. But as it is, sandwiched in between a lovely ballad and a
bombastic monstrosity, after one of the best side ones in rock
history, it's just perfectly placed. If you're going to make random
ambient improv for nine minutes, that's where to place it.
Okay, fine, I admit it: I am Robert Fripp's pimp. And I think the
xylophone ploinking is cute. But still. This album is just too
monumental, bombastic, melodic, and immaculate not to give a perfect
10 to. One of the rare moments in musical history (along with PE's It
Takes a Nation) where the most influential album in a genre just
happens to be the best as well.
In The Wake Of Poseidon (1970)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Cat Food”
OK, so you’re Robert Fripp. You’ve just helped to make the most historically important progressive rock album of all time (notice I always use the term “progressive rock” but never “prog?” I just think the term “prog” sounds like crap. Who wants to listen to “prog?” No one! Who wants to listen to “progressive rock?” Hey! That sounds cool! See?), one of a handful of records that can honestly be referred to as “genre-defining.” You’re all set to go back into the studio, capitalize on your band’s momentum, and make a second consecutive stunner. Maybe you’ll even go a record without sticking 10 minutes of useless dicking on there! Who knows? But, in any case, you’re excited.
However,
there are major problems. First, Ian McDonald, i.e. the man who played
all the horns, woodwinds AND mellotrons on said debut album, as well as the man
who had a bigger hand in the songwriting than anyone else, leaves the band. Whoops.
Then
You take on
all the remaining duties yourself, make as much of the album as possible sound
identical to that debut everyone seemed to love so much, and cross your
fingers, that’s what. And actually,
given the circumstances of basically pulling in people off the street to
contribute a piano part or backup vocal or whatever he had to do, the quality
of the record Fripp was somehow able to shit out, while not outstanding, is
still solid and definitely admirable.
However, leaving the little “Peace” things alone, because they’re all a
minute long and really shouldn’t matter to anyone, three of the five songs left
are, essentially, blatant (and less effective) rewrites of material on In the Court. In fact, the entire first side is ONE GIANT
IMITATION! The three songs there are all
nice, sure, but they are COMPLETE AND
TOTAL IMITATIONS of the band’s debut.
They’re even placed in the same order!
And none of them are as good as their counterparts on the last
record! But whatever. Without McDonald and
The second
side, at least, displays some new ideas.
The goofy little nugget “Cat Food” is my favorite track here, and might
be the only place on the album where it sounds like
And that’s basically all I can say about this record, too. The first side is a complete imitation of the first side of In the Court, just not as good, but it’s alright, and the second side is neat, but not great. Still generally a pretty good album, though, and certainly listenable all the way through, which is more than you can say for the next two.
Lizard (1970)
Rating: 4
Best Song: “Lizard”
I’m glad Fripp didn’t want to keep imitating In the Court, but at this point it’s clear that, without doing that, and now surrounded by the hacks he had in his band (Mr. Haskell has now fully taken over Greg Lake’s bass/vocal duties, Mel Collins is still on hand to suck, and Andy McCulloch has taken over for Michael Giles on over-busy, snare-happy prog-drums), Fripp had absolutely no idea what he was doing. This album is an ugly, pseudo-jazz, prog-heavy mess of epic proportions that shows just what happens when awkward British guys attempt to fuse jazz, rock, and classical without sharpness, clarity, purpose, and care. Or at least without the faintest idea of what the hell they’re supposed to do. Robert Fripp is a guitar virtuoso. Get it? GUITAR. Not mellotron, and most certainly not wanky, sax-filled, ugly jazz badness crap. As every clumsy, non-catchy horn “riff,” over-busy Mel Collins sax solo, needlessly tricky snare pattern, ugly mess of clueless noise-rock, and silly Gordon Haskell-sung vocal “melody” passes by, it becomes increasingly clear that Fripp is completely out of his element trying to make this type of music. If his band’s music is not based around guitar histrionics and cleverness, and he’s surrounded by mediocre talent, as he is now, our man Robert is up shit creek.
This album is not all that boring, and it is not without effort. It’s just bad, ugly, and messy. It’s even amusing (by accident) in places, which is one of the reasons the rating up there is as high as it is, although the principal reason is that both album sides actually start out decently before descending into badness. “Cirkus” is your opener, and while it’s far from good, at least it doesn’t piss me off and distract me from what I’m doing, as much of the rest of this record does. The keyboard trills that start the thing up aren’t that bad, and the main vocal hook is at least alright (although Haskell sounds like a frimpy, bad-toothed British idiot throughout on this album…yet still better than Geddy Lee), but that’s all I can really say about the song. It doesn’t annoy the crap out of me. The two-note sax riff that pops up is so idiotic that I could’ve written it (and, for once, I actually MEAN that! I play the sax! Kind of…). Whatever, I don’t hate it, and I don’t hate “Indoor Games” all that much either, though the song is far from good. I actually find the main melody kind of catchy, and the jumpy acoustic guitar that pops in periodically is decent, but when the song slips into “jam” mode…well, see, this is why the album sucks. More often than not, the jams are just fucking ugly. There are SO MANY horns and woodwinds and keyboards and shit that pop in and out during the course of the record (and Mel Collins simply never stops soloing on his saxes. Ever. He simply WILL NOT SHUT UP. And he just doesn’t sound good. Ever.) that when they’re layered over each other, more often than not, butt-fugliness ensues. I don’t know if they’re trying to be abrasive (because we’re playing noise-jazz prog-rock and that’s what we do! We’re abrasive! Hee! Now play another awful-sounding sax solo, Mel!) or if it just comes from incompetence, but it sucks either way, and the nadir of this ugliness is without a doubt the nearly unlistenable “Happy Family,” which, after its vocal “melody” (ha!) finishes shitting on your face, layers a piano trilling for no reason, a keyboard doing the same, a flute solo, a trumpet blasting notes at random, a snare drum going tippety-tappety-tippety-tappety and nothing else, a sax wank session, and…oh, hell, probably a trombone or some shit too all on top of each other in a completely unlistenable “jam” that is nothing other than complete chaos. But not good chaos. Total bullshit chaos, like “who the fuck could ever listen to this and not get a headache?” chaos that has no point and does not convince you at all that those involved had any notion of what they were trying to accomplish other than to be as noisy and complicated as possible. It’s so ugly that I can never remember a thing about the useless ballad “Lady of the Dancing Water” that comes next and closes out the first side. But if I pay attention to that one I realize it sucks total balls, too, so maybe, in that case, the chaos is a good thing.
Oh, and the whole rest of the album is one sidelong composition! YEAH! Fuck. At least Gordon Haskell stays away from it (He left the band before Fripp even finished the album! Ha! And he blows!), allowing Yes frontman Jon Anderson to provide vocals for the opening 4-minute section of the 22-minute long title track, titled “Prince Rupert Awakes,” and making it quite good! The ugly messiness of the rest of the record takes a brief respite, allowing the Jon’s wonderful vocals to provide the poppiest sheen possible for this excellent little tidbit of music. It’s very pretty! Just like Yesmusic! Yeah, the rest of the side degenerates into meandering pseudo-jazz soloing that never seems to end, but that first couple minutes there, HOOO doggy! I don’t even actively hate most of the thing, actually. It’s boring, yes, but occasionally the mess of horns coalesces into a combination of notes that approaches goodness, the second half has a low sax/etc. riff that reminds me vaguely of “Pictures of a City,” and most of it isn’t ugly. It’s just worthless. It simply fiddles and diddles around for 15 minutes without doing much of anything that would make me want to keep listening if I weren’t, you know, reviewing the album. Several minutes consist of three or four brass instruments soloing aimlessly at the same time on top of a repeated (and uninteresting) snare pattern and bassline. But, once again, at least it’s not hideously ugly. So it’s got that going for it, which is nice.
So, yes,
bad times here. Bad times indeed. And all of it has to get pinned on Fripp’s
shoulders. Without McDonald,
Islands (1971)
Rating: 3
Best Song: “Prelude:
Song Of The Gulls”
Ugh. Worse, and so powerfully uninteresting that, when one looks at pure entertainment value, it makes Lizard look like a Radiohead album by comparison. It’s less annoying, yes, but this record is SO INSANELY BORING AND WORTHLESS that it makes me wonder why Fripp and Crimson still even had a record deal at this point. Haskell is still gone, replaced on bass/vox duties by one Boz Burrell (later to join…Bad Company! But not on vocals! Just bass! Need I say more about his vocal stylings?). Andy McCulloch and his overactive snare hits are gone as well, replaced by the more conventional (read: boring) drumming of Ian Wallace, later to crawl back into the hole from whence he came. Mel Collins is still around to continue to suck. And there’s a bunch of auxiliary guest players who were around for Lizard too, like Keith “Andre” Tippet on piano and some dude on a cornet or something, but who the fuck cares. Just like on Lizard, Robert Fripp has surrounded himself with hacks, and the music Mr. Fripp and his merry band of talentless buffoons produce is lacking in things most people with half a brain would ever want to hear.
And, again, there is very little interesting guitar work on the record, which, again, is fucktarted, because Fripp on the guitar is the only above-average musician left. But don’t think this album is another failed stab at herky-jerky classical/jazz noise-prog! Nope! It’s not even a failed attempt at anything! It just fails! At least on Lizard, you could argue that the band had a unified vision. I might take issue with that statement, ofcourse, but you can at least see where the band is trying to go. They suck mightily, but whatever. The album seems to have a point. Not so here! I find no unifying principle to any of these tracks, beyond the simple fact that this band has no fucking idea what it is trying to do, and is simply a group of no talent bullshit producers flailing about with no rhyme or reason, hoping something will stick. How could anyone listen to the overwhelming idiocy of “Formentera Lady” and not think otherwise? It does absolutely nothing, and does nothing for TEN MINUTES! I hear a cello. I hear flutes and tinkly pianos practicing trills in the corner of the studio, not knowing that Fripp is taping them and planning on inserting their practice scales onto his album some place where they really don’t fit at all. I hear no vocal melody, just Boz cluelessly farting around because he has no idea what the gibberish Sinfield just gave him five minutes ago is supposed to mean. I hear a simple bass groove that probably took 10 seconds to write but is at least listenable pop in now and then, but then go away to make room for more useless fucking awfulness. Above all, I hear a band sitting in a recording studio with an idea neither about what kind of record they want to make nor about what they’re actually good at. I just hear bullshit.
OK, so most of what’s left isn’t as horrendous as that pile of manure, but it’s close. The first side of this record might just be the worst album side I’ve ever heard outside of the second side of A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Following “Formentera BULLSHIT,” we’re presented with seven and a half more minutes of aimlessness called “Sailor’s Tale” which contains very few differences from the track that preceded it. Fripp occasionally dusts off his guitar and throws out a few nice noisy licks in this track, which at least makes parts of it tolerable, but most of the time I just hear the loud sounds of sucking from a band that simply had no business making an album at this point. “The Letters” is actually worse than “Sailor’s Tale,” albeit better than “Formentera Lady,” if only because it’s only four minutes long. It goes back to Lizard-type ugliness in its jarring juxtaposition between soft, barely-audible quiet verses and brain-rapingly hideous Mel Collins saxophone craposity, and the moment about three minutes in where, out of nowhere, Boz breaks the quietude by belting out (with full conviction) the idiotic line “IMPALED ON NAILS…OF ICE!!!!” is just gut-bustingly hilarious, but somehow in a bad way.
Side 2 is much better, thank god. Not really good at all, but not the kind of music that would force me to go on a multi-state killing spree like that found on side 1. We continue to find King Crimson’s having no idea what kind of band they want to be, however, as “Ladies of the Road” is a FUCKING SONG about FUCKING HORNY GROUPY SLUTS in which Fripp busts out his blues guitar and Boz sings lyrics like “Stone-headed Frisco spacer at all the meat I gave her, said ‘would I like to taste hers?’ and even craved the flavor.” From King Crimson, people. Call me close-minded, but this strikes me as odd. I would LOVE to see Fripp talk about FUCKING HORNY GROUPY SLUTS. Seriously, how funny would that be? Anyway, the song isn’t much to look at, but it’s not terrible, and the poppy bridge parts are actually entertaining, even if the rest of it never stops sucking balls (just like the FUCKING HORNY GROUPY SLUTS in the song!). “Prelude: Song of the Gulls” is essentially four minutes of 100% classical music, and it’s by far my favorite song here, and it’s not even very good classical music, and I DON’T LIKE classical music! And, let me reiterate, IT IS BY FAR MY FAVORITE SONG HERE! It’s just four minutes of pretty background music that I don’t mind listening to at all and that contain nothing actively bad or annoying. ‘Tis alright! But the twelve minute title track is not. Former Patriots All-Pro linebacker Andre Tippett plays some nice piano in there, and the song is more “boring without actively sucking too much ass” than “a flaming pile of pig-droppings” (like, for instance, “Formentera Lady”). Also (score another point!) Boz’s singing doesn’t make continually me want to wretch (like, for instance, “The Letters”). If you don’t mind twelve minutes of admittedly semi-pretty total nothingness, you’ll probably like the song. Me? Well, I need stuff to happen, and by “stuff,” I don’t mean “a boring trumpet solo.”
This is the absolute bottom of the barrel as far as Crimson studio material goes. Why Robert Fripp spent two years dicking around with this worthless, horn-drenched jazz/classical hybrid gook is beyond me, especially considering what he later proved he was capable of doing WITH HIS GUITAR. This record is just a giant waste of time, and not just for the listener. This is a waste of time for the musicians involved as well. It’s just amateur bullshit from a band with no sense of direction, no idea what they wanted to do, and, outside of Fripp’s guitar (not that you could tell from these few albums), no talent. Do you realize that only a four-minute half-boring classical instrumental keeps me from giving this album a 2?? Can you fathom how fucking horrendous that is? This version of King Crimson needed to gar far, far away, and never come back.
Larks’ Tongues In Aspic (1973)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Larks’
Tongues In Aspic, Part 2”
Thankfully, that’s what happened. See, you can call Robert Fripp many things, including a “douche,” an “asshole,” and “someone who doesn’t realize that no one else likes to hear him play when he decides to wank.” What you can’t call him is “stupid,” and by 1971 I’m sure it was clear to him that whatever the fuck he was trying to do wasn’t working, he had no business trying to make anything resembling In the Court ever again, and he was surrounded by NO-TALENT HACKS. So, basically, he dissolved the band, fired everyone, and started again from scratch, this time with a mean, distorted, guitar-based sound that played to his strengths and was at that time unheard of in the rock world. Get it? He started tailoring his music to what he was good at, instead of tailoring what he was playing to some sort of pre-conceived notion of what “prog” was supposed to sound like. He decided (correctly) he wasn’t any good at progressive rock, so he reinvented what progressive rock was.
To do this,
however, he needed help. I for one have
no idea how he did it, considering he hadn’t made anything great in four years
(and he wasn’t even the driving force behind that, either!), but he put
together a fantastic lineup that, for
the short time they were together, was capable of more jaw-dropping,
emotionally resonant power than all
but a few bands in the history of rock music (at least, when they wanted to be,
which to be honest wasn’t near often enough).
To fill the bass/vox slot, he recruited one John Wetton (later of…
Now, no one Fripp had recruited had the kind of songwriting skills that waved goodbye to the band when McDonald and Lake jumped ship, but what they did have was a willingness to experiment and top-notch musical chops, two things the fucking Wallace/Collins/Burrell shit lineup had…um…lacked, and you’ll find more to interest you here within, hell, the first ten minutes than you will on the last three Crimson albums combined. The title track, totaling over twenty minutes in length and split up into two parts that bookend the album, presents you, the listener, with an excellent idea of what you’ll be dealing with here. The first couple minutes consist of a quiet assortment of exotic percussion implements (like windchimes!) whose sole purpose is to lull you in (yeah…go turn up the volume…*snicker*), before some dark as hell violin lines and guitar feedback sexiness, followed by a percussion breakdown that leads you into the monstrous, fat guitar riff that, since you’ve spent the last four minutes turning the volume up to hear everything, should probably make you jump back against the wall in shock. The riff is mean, evil, nasty, and distorted to hell, and both Bruford and Muir are chiming in with percussion craziness to keep the rhythm sufficiently interesting before a jam session in which Wetton blows your mind, Muir leaps about the recording studio like an hyper-caffeinated autistic, and Fripp sits in the corner letting his feedback waft around and cut apart the proceedings like a knife. Then everything just goes away for a time, and Cross solos for two minutes without ever losing the feeling of impending doom (the dude’s playing sounds like a funeral dirge…but a cool one!) before the whole thing builds up (this time with fucked-up and creepy vocal samples!) and explodes again. And that’s just part one!
Unfortunately, the band indulges their hippy ballad fetish (left over from the late sixties, I’m assuming) for the rest of side one, presenting easily the weakest ten minutes of the album in the process. I’d rather listen to “Book of Saturday” and “Exiles” than anything from the last two Crimson albums (except maybe the part at the start of “Lizard” where Jon Anderson reminds Fripp just who his daddy is), but that doesn’t mean either song is very interesting. “Book of Saturday” contains some interesting backwards guitar soloing, but goes away after three minutes without ever registering, and “Exiles” is pretty and has some nice violin work, but it’s clear from these tunes that this band is not one for writing songs like “I Talk to the Wind.” Since they’re all phenomenal musicians at the peak of their powers, the songs do not actively suck, but they’re sure as hell not actively good either, and they make it clear that this is a band that is better when they don’t sing. My favorite tracks from this version of the band, and therefore my favorite Crimson tracks period, are mean, evil, distorted prog-metal instrumentals. Not “Exiles.”
Thankfully, none of the second side indulges in any of that hippy shit. It’s all dark, just what I like coming from this band. “Easy Money” is probably the best vocal track on the album (and it better be, since it’s the only one left), with a cool little off-kilter melody and “EAAAAASY…MO-NEEEEEEEYY!” yelp from Wetton, but the true brilliance comes in the instrumental sections. After listening to fucking “Happy Family” and “Formentera Lady,” the groove that Bruford and Wetton work up here is filthy, both Fripp’s soloing and Muir’s hammering wood blocks against David Cross’s violin case work fantastically, and the final, loud, distorted vocal from Wetton that fades away on top of someone laughing hysterically (and coldly, like a character in some twisted Roger Waters rock opera) is superb. The track then leads into the instrumental “The Talking Drum,” which seems unexciting if you’re not paying attention, but, if you are, shows you just how much this version of the band had mastered the art of dynamics. It’s a slowly building Bruford/Wetton groove (god, they rule) that increases in volume ever-so-slightly, but consistently, with some fantastic Cross violin work at first, and then some creepy as fuck Fripp guitar manipulation at the end. The song never really reaches a climax itself, instead collapsing in ten seconds of screaming and segueing into part 2 of the title track, which functions as the climax of both the song and the entire album. It’s probably my favorite Crimson track, and presents everything that could be good about this version of the band. The main heavily-distorted guitar/violin riff is one of the most evil, hypnotic things I’ve ever heard, Muir’s percussion “additions” are at their most genius (especially the freakout at the end…good god that gives me chills), Cross’s atonal violin solo over the supremely heavy riffing about two-thirds of the way through is incredible, the way Wetton shoots his fingers up to the top of his fretboard and gets these fantastic high bass lines, and…geez. The use of volume and dynamics in this song, of subtly adding and taking away layers, is something that bands today (including Crimson in its current form) should take copious notes on. My favorite section is the thirty seconds of call-and-response between Fripp and the rhythm section before Cross’s aforementioned ear-scraping solo. LISTEN TO THAT FUCKING GUITAR TONE, people, then consider that this song was made in 1973. NO ONE sounded like that in 1973. No one.
This review is far too long, but the brilliance of this incarnation of King Crimson, when they decided to do what they were best at, cannot be overstated. Rarely ever does a band cause the kind of reaction that occurs in me when I hear “Larks’ Tongues, Part 2.” It’s positively frightening, and gives me the kind of chills only spectacularly produced horror films (like The Exorcist or something) should be able to do. And not only are they able to do this without visuals, they’re able to do this without vocals. The only warning I can give out is that this is not passive music. This is music that must be listened to actively and with no distractions to be fully appreciated. It’s also some of the coldest, most evil-sounding, meanest music you can ever hear. Too bad they had to sully it with their dumb hippy ballads.
Starless And Bible Black (1974)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Fracture”
Clearly the weakest of the three studio albums by this version of Crimson (well…duh), but I’d nevertheless hazard to say Ugly and Slightly Fat is a bit underrated by the web reviewing community as a whole. So the band liked to “jam” atonally and without any structure at all during their concerts, and Fripp, like the moron he is, actually thought people wanted to hear that shit. That’s Fripp. He’s a douche. We know this. And so all but like 15 minutes of this album are just spliced together live recordings that present the band indulging in this kind of wankery that most rational people will never want to hear. Fine! I know this! But to listen to the record like twice, be thrown off by all the structureless, atonal masturbation, give it a 4, and go “Bah! Humbug!” is more than a bit unfair, methinks. First of all, not all of this album is useless jamming. Looking at the track listing, I count three tracks (out of EIGHT) that consist of nothing but this (“We’ll Let You Know,” “The Mincer,” and the title track), and while I will agree with you that they’re annoying, they’re not soul-suckingly awful or anything. I still think, individually, the musicians sound great. Wetton’s fat, delicious bass tone is something I will personally never get tired of, Bruford is still Bruford, etc. Hell, they seem to latch onto something decent at the end of “The Mincer” before the song cuts off for no reason (what, was half the tape caught in a fire? Did Muir smack it with a chopstick?). Why does everyone treat these tracks like they’re the spawn of Lucifer?
That’s not to say they’re any good, ofcourse. They’re not.
I’m not gonna sit here and claim that people, no matter their talent,
playing random notes at random times in a futile attempt to create something
musical is entertaining to listen to.
It’s not, which is what makes the end of “The Mincer” even more
frustrating (They found something, dammit!
You make me listen to four minutes of the aural equivalent of taking a
shit, then you accidentally latch onto something cool, and then you cut it off??? Goddammit, Fripp…). But a) I’d still rather listen to any of this
1973 atonal jamming stuff than most of
Admittedly, though, the tracks
I’ve been mentioning, while quite good, are not King Crimson at their absolute
best. I’d take anything on Larks’ Tongues,
bar the hippy ballad boringness, over “Lament” or “Trio” or what-have-you. My point is that they’re very fine tracks,
and not at all the ear-hurting wankery that other reviewers would have you
believe. The bookend tracks of the
album, however, are where the real
meat is. The opening “The Great
Deceiver” begins with a vicious
guitar/sax noise assault that absolutely kicks my ass before changing into an
utterly perverse pop song (“HEALTH FOOD FAGGOT!!!”) that confuses me to no end,
but I nevertheless enjoy immensely, and the closing eleven minute instrumental
“Fracture” is the only thing here that can hold a candle to the best tracks of
this era of the band. It spends the
first seven or so minutes building up in, admittedly, not the most exciting
fashion of you’re not paying attention, and the track could definitely be made
more compact (listen to Fripp’s guitar
arpeggios, though. Then try to play
them, you no-talent hack whose name is Mel Collins). But at the seven and a half minute mark is
where you remember what King Crimson circa 1973/74 can do to you when they feel
like it. The sheer force and power behind
the riffage here is breathtaking, and makes me forget that it took way to damn
long to get to this point. It’s not even
the structure or the riff itself. It’s
just how they play it. Christ, they
rule. I just wish they did this more
than once or twice an album.
This version and lineup of King Crimson was so good that they could make 40% of an album intentionally unlistenable and have the album turn out just fine anyway. Granted, most bands wouldn’t make 40% of an album intentionally unlistenable, but most bands don’t have Robert Fripp in them. If this propensity for wankery bothers you, it’s just something you’re gonna have to accept. This is how Robert Fripp rolls. Thankfully, in 1974, his band was capable of taking you to such incredible highs that they could get past it, throw a “Great Deceiver” or “Lament” or “Fracture” on there, and continue making good albums.
Red (1974)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Red”
With Jamie Muir having gone off to join the circus (or something, who knows) and David Cross off as an understudy with Blue Man Group, the band, except for a cornucopia of “blast from the past” guest players (Cross comes back for a song or two, Mel Collins actually stops sucking for a moment, Ian McDonald is back, and there’s also the dude on the cornet, and probably some other shit) is now reduced to a power trio. But no matter. Both the greatest progressive rock album of all time and one of the heaviest albums ever produced (yeah, you read that right), Red, more than anything else, shows the dark power that Fripp, Wetton, and Bruford were capable of producing when they put their minds to it (or, more accurately, when Fripp put his mind to it…you know this album is composed of outtakes from the Starless and Bible Black sessions?…Goddammit, Fripp…). On their previous records you got to see it now and again, from the heavy riffing sections of “Larks’ Tongues, Part 1,” to the entire “Larks’ Tongues, Part 2,” to the massive ending of “Fracture,” etc., but this record is nonstop. When he really lets it loose, Fripp distorts his guitars more than he’s ever done before or since, even the quiet “sing-songy” parts have an overarching feel of total dark evilness, and even Wetton’s bass is distorted into oblivion. From start to finish, this album is a massive, distorted, heavy, dark, evil, creepy, brooding, mastodontic masterpiece, and something no other band at any time in rock history has ever been capable of.
If there are any Tool fans among my readership, I suggest you pick this album up now, because the title track here is Tool’s entire reason for existence wrapped up one of the meanest instrumental packages I’ve ever heard. You thought Larks’ Tongues was mean? Larks’ Tongues is fucking skipping gaily through a field of petunias compared to this album, and this track. While not as mindblowingly complicated or intricate as the material on Larks’ Tongues, the track makes up for it with how it is played. Every riff (there are like four or five, and they all rule) is simply layered, distorted, and overdubbed repeatedly until Fripp has obtained the darkest, most perfect guitar tone in the history of the universe. The bridge part where Fripp’s guitar fades in and out underneath a cello that sounds like pure evil would give even the most experienced music listener a shiver if they’re hearing it for the first time. There is not a second I would change about the track. It shows what structure, riff, and distortion are capable of when used by musicians of the highest caliber at the peak of their creative powers.
Now, ofcourse, “Red” is the undeniable highlight of the album (though I still barely prefer “Larks’ Tongues, Part 2” as the ultimate highlight of Crimson’s career), but the reason this record is far better than Larks’ Tongues is that the mood set by “Red” never goes away. It’s replaced neither by hippy ballads, nor long-winded, barely audible Muir dicking improvisations, nor three-minute Cross violin solos (I like the last two, ofcourse, but I don’t necessarily miss ‘em too much). I know I keep saying this, but this album is all dark, all the time, and you will simply have to trust me until you hear it yourself. “Fallen Angel” is the “ballad” of the album, but it’s not like we’re dealing with “Exiles” here. The song begins with an absolutely horrifying mellotron rumble and backwards guitar tape-splicing, and the song’s melody is the best vocal part the band’s come up with since the days of In the Court. Wetton’s continually distorted bass, Fripp’s subtle acoustic touches, and an absolutely perfect oboe backing (who’s idea was THAT? God, the oboe sounds incredible here) provide the band with the only ballad they’ve ever written to rival “I Talk to the Wind” (and, I mean, it fucking KILLS “I Talk to Wind!”). The part about halfway through where the song goes away and Fripp plays some low, mean guitar lines is just orgasmic, and then when Wetton’s bass comes back it’s like twice as distorted as before. Motherfucker…
OK, the paranoid fear-of-flying
rocker “One More Red Nightmare” comes next, and while the vocal melody isn’t as
superb as “Fallen Angel,” it’s no slouch either (who knew this band could write
songs? Why did Wetton never write
anything as good as “Fallen Angel” for
Ofcourse, the album finishes on a high note (could it be any other way?) with the twelve-minute masterpiece “Starless,” a return to the mastery of dynamics found on Larks’ Tongues. It starts off with some gentle mellotron and Fripp pretty-soloing, over which Wetton tosses out some vocal hooks more than a little reminiscent of In the Court-era bombastic loveliness. After about four minutes, though, the “song” abruptly vanishes. Wetton lays down a simple bass line, Fripp plays a repeated two-note solo, and the song spends the next eight-minutes building to the most orgasmic crescendo of the band’s career. Wetton turns up the distortion pedal on his bass, Bruford starts bashing a little harder, Fripp moves his hand up the fretboard little by little, and they just gradually do this for like five goddamn minutes before…well, a sax breakdown and some other stuff that, while cool, kind of breaks up the flow for a bit. But the last minute I simply won’t describe. You’ll have to go hear it for yourself.
Unlike Larks’ Tongues, this is not simply an album for prog-fiends. Red grabs you by the throat and does not let go. It’s a terrifying, bleak, massive, exhilarating album that belongs in the collection of anyone with even a passing interest in hard rock. Not just prog-rock, hard rock. Period. If you’re a fan of traditional seventies hard rock/heavy metal but avoid “prog” like the plague, it will completely destroy any preconceived notion you may have of how a band can be “heavy.” As someone who thoroughly enjoys heavy guitars and the trappings that come with them, I consider Red the pinnacle of progressive rock. It is massive. It is the king of the genre, and it will never be topped.
And so, ofcourse, Fripp dissolved the band and reformed it seven years later as yuppie new wave music. Goddammit, Fripp…
Dominick
You know why I think this
era/album ruled so much?
John Wetton. We all know that Fripp has good ideas
that he then ruins by wanking all over them until he
reaches unparelled heights of self-pleasuring, and
while Bruford was a great drummer, I highly doubt that
he had any say whatsoever in the creative process (in
Yes OR Crimson). This leaves only Wetton. Besides, I
generally find myself appreciating this album mainly
BECAUSE of Wetton (though the other two guys are
really good too). His bass lines are INSANE
('Starless'! Fuck, I love that song...) and his
singing on all three vocal tracks just perfectly
complements everything else. Anyway, this album
rules. A definite 10, and 'Starless' is one of the
greatest songs ever.
Discipline (1981)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Frame By
Frame”
So as soon as I finished part 1 of the Crimson page, my little shit summer cottage that is not built to be inhabited in the winter decided to fall apart. My pipes froze, then my plumbing got so backed up that every time I flushed the toilet my shower flooded with water, then I ran out of propane and thus hot water (and it’s TEN DEGREES outside), and then, ofcourse, my other pipes froze, the ones that carry the hot water (so even though I finally had my propane refilled, I still had to wait another day to take a damn shower without giving myself pneumonia). It all got fixed just in time for a foot (or whatever, as I type this it actually just started) of snow to fall and totally bury my car. I have a week’s worth of errands and work that didn’t get done because I had to sit at home like an idiot and wait for plumbers to come like three separate times this week. So ofcourse I’m spending my Saturday afternoon typing up a review or two of post-brilliance King Crimson albums. Because I’m an idiot.
Anyway, like I said at the end of the last review, after releasing the defining album of his career and the best album in the history of progressive rock, Fripp, like a moron, decided to break up his band. So for the rest of the decade he hopped around and played as a session musician with bands like Talking Heads and made a couple albums with Brian Eno I’ll probably never hear in my life, but by the turn of the new decade, con sarnet, he wanted to be in a band again! But not a mastodontic prog-metal force! Nope! He was hip to all this new-wavey-type clean-sounding arpeggiated guitar runs and soundscape poo, and wanted a band like that! And again, though this time not surprisingly, given that he was so well-respected in the rock world, he put together a spectacularly talented lineup, getting bald-headed, mustachioed Tony “The Best Session Bassist in the History of the World” Levin to make my head spin with his creative bass lines and use of something called a Chapman Stick that looks downright retarted, re-getting our old friend Billy Bruford on drums (now infusing his work with use of worldbeat (whatever that is) and and electronic drum pads and other stuff I really don’t understand), and actually recruiting a second guitarist, one Adrian Belew, to front the group, sing and yelp ironically about stuff that makes no sense at all, duel Fripp in who can arpeggiate fastest, and generally be the pop-leaning yin to Fripp’s avant-garde yang. In theory, a very interesting quartet!
Unfortunately, though Belew’s not bad, they still aren’t the top at writing songs, so when this version of the group isn’t playing live and subsequently kicking my ass, they’re just pretty OK and a bit of a disappointment after the highs of the mid-seventies. What, you say my biases towards heavy guitar distortion are tempering these reviews? Well, OFCOURSE they are! But that doesn’t change the fact that this version of the group doesn’t excite me nearly as much as the ‘73/’74 band. This album’s real good, though! Best one indeed from Crim #3 (or #5, or #6, depending on how much you wanna split up the era around 1970-71 when Fripp had to recruit six new guys every month and everything he touched turned to shit), and definitely the only one from this era of the band that doesn’t pause somewhere in the middle to jam my head into a toilet. However, as you know, that’s something I expect from King Crimson by this point, so when portions of the next two see Fripp’s going off on instrumental wank tangents that make my eardrums attempt to dive right out of my head, I just shrug. That’s Fripp.
Again, thankfully, that doesn’t happen here, and much of this one is actually very good. As far as I can tell, this version of Crim’s songs can mostly be broken up into two categories: instrumentals and near-instrumentals (which can vary wildly from “exhilarating” to “an aural route canal”) and melodic/cheesy Belew songs without too much instrumental fun. It’s the few times that these two are combined that this version of the band really blows me away, and thus “Frame By Frame,” which takes the fascinating and incredibly tricky guitar arpeggios that provide roughly 75% of the reason you listen to ‘80’s King Crimson in the first place and adds a super-melodic Belew vocal to them, is my favorite song here. “In your….anaaaaaaaaaalysiiiiis!” Super! And that’s the only time the two are combined on the album. See? Crimson was only an expert songwriting outfit for one record. And they never got it back.
That doesn’t mean the rest of the album can suck one, though. Far from it. The near-instrumentals where Fripp and Belew’s guitar arpeggiated tastiness rule the day are still fresh and exciting. For instance, take “Elephant Talk,” which takes, essentially, one supremely tricky arpeggiated groove, milks it for five minutes, and has Belew shout different words for talking over it. Yes, it’s sometimes annoying (“Bicker bicker bicker BICKER!!!!!”), but listen to those damn guitars. They don’t really get me like the riff-monster that was the mid-seventies band, but they’re very impressive. “Thela Hun Gingeet” falls under this umbrella, too, though the groove isn’t quite as interesting and I get tired of Belew yelling out “Thela hun gingeet!!!!!!” eventually (six minutes? Poop!). The instrumental title track at the end, though completely not original at all if you’ve heard the rest of this album (Hey! Fast guitar arpeggios! Where have I heard that before…), is pleasant, and “Indiscipline,” the only place where Fripp takes out his seventies-era distortion pedal, kicks ass. Even Belew’s monologue stuff sounds cool! Especially at the end when he yells out “I LIKE IT!!!!!” Pretty good stuff. “Matte Kudasai” is the “romantic Belew ballad” that you’ll find on every single King Crimson album from now until the end of time, and it’s probably the best one he’s ever written for the band. Is it me or do the guitar sounds at the beginning sound like they’re from Yes’s Relayer somewhere? Huh? I dunno. And “The Sheltering Sky,” while mildly interesting for a short amount of time, overstays its welcome far too long by continuing for eight goddamn minutes in its new age synth instrumental boring nothingness. Poop!
Pretty good effort, this one is, and easily the best studio record you’ll find from this version of the band (and, hell, easily the best studio record you’ll find from any version of the band after 1974), but I find the days of being grabbed by this band might have ended when Fripp put away his distortion pedal and fell in love with his “new-wavey” tricky arpeggios, “new-agey” soundscapes, and whatever the hell “Frippertronics” is supposed to be (not that I care, since it doesn’t bash heads). I also feel that this is where Crimson hopped off the wagon in terms of being “ahead of their time.” I mean, they invented a musical genre in 1969, and then, after admittedly sucking for a few years there, made music in the mid-seventies that was so ahead of its time it didn’t even actively influence anyone for like twenty years. Now? Well, though they’re not yet behind the times, they’re sure as hell not ahead of their time either, since all they are by this point is slightly more complicated, avant-garde, and proggish version of the Talking Heads. Since both Belew and Fripp at one time or another did session work for the Heads before re-forming Crimson, it’s definitely understandable that the band sounds like the Heads (it means they sound like themselves, doesn’t it?), but, just like I said in the intro, the less forward-thinking this band is, the less relevant and exciting they are, and this album, along with the rest of the band’s career, just proves it.
Beat (1982)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Sartori
In Tangier”
For the third consecutive time, Crimson follow up a very impressive debut with a not-bad but weaker follow-up. In the Court had In the Wake, Larks’ Tongues had Starless and Bible Black, and Discipline has Beat, which does all the same stuff its predecessor did, but in much poorer fashion, and thus will probably not have a very long review from yours truly. Until we get to the last few songs, where the album just totally falls apart and sucks all sorts of dick, the thing is decent, but no better, and smacks of “rush job” in the same way as its follow-up counterparts.
Again, though, it starts out pretty well. “Neal and Jack and Me” is like “Frame By Frame” in that it combines the lovely arpeggiated guitars that make the eighties band worthwhile and some nice, melodical Belew vocals, but fails in that it’s just not as good as its predecessor. If you have Discipline, there’s really no need to get these next two albums (hell, there’s no need to get Discipline either, given the existence of Absent Lovers). Fripp and his cohorts came up with a schtick, made a successful album with it, and didn’t change it at all for three years. “Progressive rock” my ass. “Heartbeat,” while better than the Don Johnson song of the same name, is a weak-dicked love song pop single that has about as much input from Fripp’s guitar as my daily masturbation sessions (and, unlike Fripp, I masturbate like a real man, with my penis. If I were any good at guitar I’d damn well play songs with it). Is it catchy? Sure! Is it any good? I’m not sure! It’s alright, I guess, but not nearly as impressive as “Matte Kudasai,” its love ballad Belew solo spot analogue on Discipline.
The rest of side 1 provides the listener with the record’s most interesting material, however. “Sartori in Tangier” is a very nice little instrumental that almost functions as a show-off piece for the band’s superb rhythm section, with detailed and fascinating drum work from Bruford, and the lovely “Waiting Man” is sort of worldbeat (it sounds like electronic bongo drums, if in fact those exist) meets more pretty arpeggiated guitars I’ve heard before (but are nonetheless nice) meets Belew lovely pseudo-singing. Pretty! Is it a fantastic song? No, but it’s very hypnotic and pretty, which is more than I can say for anything on side 2, for the second half of this record, after an interesting piece of avant-garde noisemaking called “Neurotica,” in which Fripp bashes, Bruford and Levin rule, and Belew, uh, rants randomly about god knows what (you know what? I’m not the biggest Adrian Belew fan. He has a pretty voice and plays a mean guitar, but his tastes in songwriting more often that not just annoy me), just blows. “Two Hands” is more limp, new-age bullshit, this time with Belew providing some retarted lyrics about “two hands…touching each other,” “The Howler” is occasionally interesting and fun, but more often than not an excuse for Fripp to make some of his “sounds,” and “Requiem” is just horrible. Two minutes of new-age heavenly synth backing over which Fripp solos absolutely aimlessly (god, what a shit genre of music “new age” is, by the way. Lay down a few “soothing” synth lines, play some sort of quiet electronic percussion, and “meditate.” Bullshit, I say), followed by another five in which the band digs out a tape from the Starless and Bible Black sessions and layers some eighties-sounding synths over the top. And it’s the longest track on the album by like two minutes! HORRIBLE.
So, there are a number of nice songs here, but overall the reaction I get from this one is…eh. Only “Requiem” absolutely blows out loud (though “Two Hands” comes damn close), most of it is perfectly OK to listen to, and, again, a lot of its first half is pretty good, but…eh. If I never hear this album again, I don’t think I’ll mind.
Three Of A Perfect Pair (1984)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Three Of
A Perfect Pair”
After King Crimson’s first weak follow-up, they dove head-first into complete suckitude and disbanded within a year. After King Crimson’s second weak follow-up, they rebounded with the finest album of their career…and disbanded within a year. So what would they do after their third weak follow-up? Something altogether different! Yes, neither becoming horrendous nor totally ruling the ass of everyone who has any taste in music whatsoever, they’d make an album just as average as the one that preceded it…and, ofcourse, disband within a year again, but that’s neither here nor there. Three of a Perfect Pair (Of an Obvious Tittie Joke I Won’t Make) continues in the Beat Off mode of mediocre records with boring, instantly-eighties album covers, lots of arpeggiated guitar sounds I’ve heard before (and better) on Discipline, and Fripp’s commandeering a few tracks to remind us why everyone hates him.
OK, so it’s a little different from Beat. First, instead of the general overarching feel of “weak-ass imitation” that that one had, it’s much more distinguishable from Discipline in its complete and total separation of poppy eighties new-wavey weird poppy pop songs and fucking ridiculous Fripp instrumental wankathons, and instead of the whole thing sliding by decently but not really registering, you can actually find some of eighties Crimson’s best work here, albeit tempered by some other material that is absolutely wretched. So maybe it’s a more interesting listen than Beat, but it’s sure as hell not any better, and the production even is weak and flat compared to its two predecessors, making the arpeggiated guitar sparkliness less super-pretty.
However, as I just said, a few
songs kick. The opening title track is the easily best job eighties Crim ever did
of melding their trademark lightning-fast guitar runs and lovely Belew pop melodies, for instance. It RULES!
I neither know nor care what Belew is talking about, but what he’s
singing is so catchy! The guitar
interplay is also very interesting here,
albeit (again) poorly produced, and the song is just a great time all
around. “Keeps it
complicaaateeeeeeeed!” It’s great
farging stuff, and much of the first half of the record follows its opener’s
lead of “let’s try to write poppy pop songs!”
Or, more accurately, “let’s get
After the first four tunes, though, the album takes an abrupt left turn to avant-garde instrumental-ville and doesn’t come back, and large chunks of what’s left are so bad they’re offensive. “Nuages (Idiotic Parentheses About Clouds that Sucks),” for instance. Look at its title. “Nuages.” “NuAges.” “New Age Awful Bullshit ‘Holistic’ Crap Music.” It’s the lowest of the low for this version of the band’s strange obsession with sleep-inducing elevator/dentist office muzak feces, and I hate it with every fiber of my being that isn’t already occupied hating George W. Bush. It’s terrible, and “Industry,” some sort of electronic instrumental that specializes in nothing except giving me a headache, isn’t much better. And it goes for seven minutes. I’m also not even sure “No Warning” is a song. I think they just accidentally left the tape on while Fripp was strangling a kitten or something. I mean, you’re telling me this is the best you can come up with? I know you four guys can play like motherfuckers when you want (skip to the next review for further elaboration on this subject). This isn’t even MUSIC. I don’t know what this crap is supposed to be. It makes the wank-nothing tracks on Starless and Bible Black sound GODLIKE, because at least there the band is wanking off with organic instruments. Here there are so many new wave electronics and synths screwing around that they make otherwise boring, useless material nearly unbearable. If you’re gonna just toss a bunch of random electronic drum hits and bass “bwoing” sounds together and call it a song, you might as well throw a chorus in there and make it catchy, and thus the very weird “Dig Me,” which screws with your head for 90 seconds at a time before the pretty, shimmery “I’m ready to LEEEEAAAAAAVE!” goodness comes in, is very cool. And the closing instrumental “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part 3” (might as well start making obvious references to our past now, just to get people used to the idea, eh?) totally rules. Its power and instrumental ass-kicking actually remind me of the mid-seventies band for about three minutes (not surprising, ofcourse, given the song’s title), but halfway through the song morphs into a not-that-interesting groove that, while good, prevents me from giving the song my “best of the eighties band!” nod, which I instead bequeath to “Three of a Perfect Pair.” But what does it say about this band that the best couple minutes of music they ever laid down are deliberately reminiscent, both in title and style, of their mid-seventies past? That, at least on record, the band was better in 1974 than 1984? Well NO FUCKING SHIT.
The wild inconsistency of this album makes it clear to me the band, again, really had to break up. Belew wanted to write pop songs and Fripp wanted to go off in a corner, hunch over in a chair, and suck. It’s jarring. The title track is a brilliant combination of superb guitar work, song structure, and melody, “Sleepless” is wonderfully groovy and catchy, and “Larks’ Tongues, Part 3” is fantastic (well, half of it is). But “Nuages,” “Industry,” and “No Warning” constitute some of the most horrendous music this band ever saw fit to release. But saying “King Crimson is inconsistent” is like saying “George W. Bush is a fucking moron.” It doesn’t really need to be said. Maybe if they break up for a decade they can fix that. Or they can become a mediocre shadow of their former selves. Either way.
Absent Lovers (1998)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Three Of
A Perfect Pair”
Fuck, did these guys rule live. Rarely does a live album come along that makes an band’s entire studio output useless, but, for the eighties version of King Crimson, this double-CD 100-minute archive release bonanza does just that. It’s taken from the last show of the last tour the eighties band ever did, at “Le Spectrum” in Montreal, Frogland, in 1984, and it is so flabbergastingly good when compared to the studio records by this band that anyone who buys Discipline, Beat, or Three of a Perfect pair at this point is either a completist or an idiot. What, you’re afraid you’ll miss some key moments without the studio albums? The best songs absent from this record are “Neal and Jack and Me” and “Model Man,” and, trust me, you can live without them. The song selection (everything bar “The Sheltering Sky” (which sucks!) from Discipline, “Heartbeat,” “Sartori in Tangier” and “Waiting Man” from Beat, everything bar “Model Man,” “Nuages,” and “No Warning” from Three of a Perfect Pair, as well as “Red” and “Larks’ Tongues, Part 2” (i.e. my two favorite Crimson songs EVER!) as token leftovers from the mid-seventies) is near-flawless. The playing is fantastic, note-perfect, full of energy, and alive. In short, just like In the Court presents everything good about the early band and Red presents everything good about the mid-seventies band, this presents everything good about the eighties band.
See, the eighties band never really jammed live, so a live album from this era isn’t gonna contain any 30-minute improv wankfest double route-canal torture sessions. They just get on stage and PLAY, running through every worthwhile song they ever wrote with 100 times more energy, conviction, and power than they ever displayed in studio. The good songs are now great, the mediocre songs are now good, and the occasional shitty song (“Industry”) is still shitty, but it’s not like you can spackle up a pile of dung and call it chocolate. If you thought a song sounded muddled or lacked conviction on record, but you liked it anyway, chances are you’ll love it here. Listen to how Adrian YELLS his monologue parts in “Indiscipline” (as well as how Bruford’s electro-drum solo KICKS MY ASS) and how everything in “Thela Hun Gingeet” is cranked up in such a manner as to make the studio version nearly unlistenably boring in comparison. The pretty chorus parts in “Dig Me” stand out that much more, just because they’re delivered that much better. “Three of a Perfect Pair,” when removed from the weak production on the album of the same name, is finally revealed as the ultimate eighties King Crimson song, and a nearly-perfect pop song to boot. The two seventies leftovers are a little weaker than their studio counterparts, since the creepy violin parts and overwhelming distortion are replaced by Chapman Stick and echoey new wave guitars and such, but they’re still fantastic songs, so it’s OK! “Sartori in Tangier” suddenly goes from “cool” to “wow!” “Sleepless” could not possibly be performed better than it is here. The guitar interplay in “Discipline” reveals itself to be the most neatly intricate in the band’s eighties catalogue, and makes a song that has nothing else going for it still rule rectum. I could go on, but I think you get the point.
I guess it’s too bad “Industry” is still a horrendous pile of anal leakage (though, again, Bill’s lightning-fast electronic kit bashing makes the song eons better here than in studio), “Heartbeat” is still stupid, and “Man With an Open Heart” still has a chord sequence that makes me involuntarily break into hives. And the overwhelming cleanliness of this version of the band still means they lack the visceral, emotional power the mid-seventies incarnation had, but whatever. I couldn’t imagine a better document of the eighties version of King Crimson. It’s just not possible. All the band’s best songs, played in note-perfect, supremely energetic versions that almost uniformly blow away their studio counterparts. Levin’s bass playing, especially on the two seventies leftovers, is fantastic. Bruford’s drumming here is some of the best I’ve ever heard, and, as I’ve alluded several times in this review, his use of electronic drum pads here is the best I’ve ever heard. He melds them with his acoustic kit in a completely seamless and absolutely awe-inspiring way. Just brilliant. And the moment on disc 2 where one of the fans yells out “Four of a perfect band!” is hilarious. Listen for it. As far as live Crimson goes, he wasn’t all that far off. DO NOT BUY a studio album from the eighties King Crimson. Just get this and tell Beat to go fuck itself.
THRAK (1995)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Dinosaur”
Up until now, King Crimson really hadn’t followed the typical career path for a prog-rock group, which is: form around 1970, muddle around making decent records for a year or two, find your sound around 1972-3, release some of the genre’s best albums, gradually fade into oblivion the rest of the seventies, in the eighties either a) go the pop route and become commercial megastars or b) go the pop route and completely embarrass yourselves, fade into oblivion again the rest of the decade and on into the early nineties, finally go on an enjoyably listenable but ultimately pathetic nostalgia trip around 1995/96, and continue on said nostalgia trip until today. Nope, Crimson actually defined the entire genre of progressive rock with their debut, released by FAR their worst records in 1970 and 1971 (a weird anomaly, if you think about it), broke up for the entire second half of the seventies to avoid fading into Bolivian (copyright: Mike Tyson), actually attempted to make interesting music in the eighties as opposed to becoming slicked-over pop radio whores, and avoided oblivion again by breaking up for the third time. See what I mean about “no pandering?” Fripp kept breaking up his band before they turned into a running joke in the same way many of their compadres did.
But 1995 rolled around, and while Fripp can still take his band onstage for hours at a time and stick his wah-wah pedal up his ass or whatever he wants to do to make sure you sure as hell don’t get your money’s worth if you hate improv (OK, that was unfair: this incarnation of the band supposedly kicks my ass live…whatever), in studio the post-1995 King Crimson is nothing but a nostalgia trip. Sure, their “nostalgia” may involve distorto-prog-metal instrumentals instead of sissy new age pop like Yes, but the last time this band tried anything new was on Discipline, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
OK, so in theory the new lineup Fripp put together sounds like the coolest thing on earth. He’s taken the entire eighties lineup (Fripp, Belew, Levin, Bruford) and added an extra Chapman stick-ist/Warr guitar-ist (?)/NOT bassist, Trey Gunn, and an extra drummer, Pat Mastelotto, to create what Fripp called a “double trio,” i.e. two lead guitarists and two complete rhythm sections. So they can split up into three or four man groups called “ProjeKcts” (I wish I were making that up) and wank in a smaller setting, or they can all morph together like the Power Rangers to create the disappointingly uninteresting six-headed behemoth we have here. The band’s style, again in theory, is a combination of the eighties hyper-complicated new wave guitar arpeggio loveliness with the improv tendencies and massive, heavy, distorted riffing of the mid-seventies band, while the crap-jazz aimlessness of Lizard is thankfully left out of the mix. You look at all this and think, “cool!” At least I do. Six super-talented musicians on hand, playing what should be very neat, original, interesting music.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. On this record at least, I actually sense very little real influence from the eighties band, and the only times it pops up are the useless, one-minute, pile-of-shit “Inner Garden” instrumentals and a few slow, new-age Belew pop songs (“Walking on Air,” “One Time”) that, pathetically, provide two of the best tracks on the album. Therefore, it’s left to the seventies band to influence most of the proceedings, and despite the presence of two-thirds of that outfit’s skeleton in studio, they just completely miss the mark, concentrating instead on two or three-note riffs that try to sound as “distorted” and “mean” as possible but don’t, because there’s no contrast or buildup of dynamics, things crucial to creating the atmosphere of doom the seventies band ruled at. Plus, the riffs really aren’t that exciting, and while they try to make up for it sometimes by letting Bruford and Mastelotto solo over top of them to make them sound “proggy,” in the end they just sound like very weak imitations of what the band produced two decades before. The title track is just awful, for instance, like two boring-as-shit metal chords with eight tons of distortion piled on top playing over and over and over and doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING INTERESTING. “B’Boom” is a drum solo involving two drummers, so it’s twice as annoying. I suppose “Vrooom” is alright (listen to the intro: it actually uses dynamics), but the blatant, hideous DIRECT LIFTING from “Red” in “Vrooom Vrooom” just gives me a rash.
Aside from the semi-enjoyable “Vrooom,” the best moments here are actually pop songs, which seems funny to me considering Fripp had eleven goddamn years to come up with a few good riffs for his instrumentals, but whatever. Besides the two alright new agey tracks I mentioned before, “Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream” contains a decent enough intro riff and mildly entertaining mega-distorted breakdown parts, and “Dinosaur” is actually fantastic. I wish Fripp had come up with a riff better than the two-note thing he repeats ad nauseam for six minutes here, but everything else about the song is pretty much ace. Belew’s melodic vocals, the complicated, fill-heavy, two-drummer percussion (which really works here), that “IIIIIIIIII’M a dinosaur!!!” chorus. It’s just a very good song all the way through, except ofcourse for the aimless mellotron-strings bridge part (the kind of place you might have seen Cross deliver a solo twenty years ago, but without him Fripp is left to fuck around by himself when he wants a “string” solo). The same cannot be said, though, for the awful “People,” which I think tries to be “funk,” but as played by King Crimson it sounds whiter and stupider than (insert joke about the Bush administration here).
This is
easily the most clueless and directionless I’ve seen Crimson since the days of
The ConstruKction Of Light (2000)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Coda: I
Have A Dream”
Before I get to the review, I need to address the ridiculousness of this album title. How full of himself does Fripp have to be to change the spelling of words so that every place you see a “c,” it’s replaced by a “Kc?” Come on, “ConstruKction?” “ProjeKcts?” “ProzaKc?” Doesn’t anyone else have a problem with this? Doesn’t anyone else realize the sick levels of pretension it takes to pull this crap? It’s retarted! Should I just change every “b” to a “Bh” now, since my initials are B.H.? The Bheatles rule! I fucking hate emo Bhands! They suck Bhalls! BhobBhy Fripp is a aBhsolute douche who can suck my knoBh! Why is everyone voting for the Bheastie Bhoys and not Bheck? Just kidding, Bheck annoys me! Oyster Bhay is full of morons with Bhig Bhalls of cash! Fuck this Bhullshit.
OK, enough
of that. This one’s Bhetter (Hee! Alright, I promise I’ll stop now) than TTTHHHHHRAK!
because the prog-metal instrumental self-ripoffery is at least interesting and complicated-sounding, as opposed to Fripp’s shitting out the first
two chords that came into his head and then distorting them until you can’t
tell what chords they are, and not
because of the quality of the “pop songs” you might find herein. First, because the actual songs are, on the
whole, weaker than their THRAK
counterparts (at least if you toss out “People,” which is just an oozing pile
of feces), and, second, because there aren’t
any pop songs. The only “song” with
vocals and everything that doesn’t spend half its duration in intricate
instrumental work is “ProzaKc Blues,” which is a blues song (seriously!), and sucks
total balls. I completely agree with
Capn Marvel’s assessment of the song, because it’s clear that a band as
“important” as King Crimson views the “blues” as some sort of inherently
inferior genre of music that only peons bother listening to. I think it’s obvious that they’re actually mocking it. They put Adrian’s voice through some sort of
pitch-shifting gruffifyer to make it sound like an old blues man from the
Mississippi Delta (which they might have done because Adrian’s normal voice is about as bluesy as that
fat moron from that fucktarted Coheed and Cambria band that sounds like Rush if
they decided to play really awful emo music and had no talent, but to me it
just sounds like an extension of the fact that they think “blues” as a genre is
a silly joke for idiots who don’t “comprehend” King Crimson’s brilliant
artistic vision). Occasionally there’s a
tasty instrumental bit in there (that has nothing at all to do with the blues), but mostly I find the song absolutely
appalling. Notice the lyrical
name-dropping of “elephant talk,” too (See?
I told you it wasn’t the last time!).
If you want to make fun of the blues, Fripp, fine, but as a retaliatory
measure I’ll find everyone I know and play them Lizard and
Just skip that track, though, and the rest of the album will give you a decent time, especially if you concentrate on the tasty instrumental hibbity-jibbity. It’s really not any more original or exciting than most of the stuff on THRAK, but it at least sounds like it took the full talents of the four members (oh, right, Levin and Bruford are gone now, leaving the band as a standard four-piece with Fripp, Belew, Gunn, and Mastelotto) to write and perform, and it’s not retarted. It also contains much more influence from the eighties band’s trademark super-complex clean guitar lines, and thus the combination of seventies heavy guitar distortion and eighties shimmery arpeggiated prettiness is finally delivered, albeit five years after it was promised to us (but give Fripp a break: he’s old). The two-part title track and the nine-minute “FraKctured” (GAAAHHH!! Another conscious, blatant self-reference!) are essentially the same thing: Mastelotto’s complicated and electro-heavy drum patterns, Gunn’s creative lines from various new-fangled instruments that are not a bass (WHAT THE FUCK is a Warr Guitar???? I still have no idea…), and Fripp/Belew alternating between Discipline-reminiscent guitar lines and distorted Red-reminiscent guitar CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUNCH. However, unlike the best instrumentals from these periods (“Red,” “Larks’ Tongues” in its various parts), these tracks don’t sound all that structured. They’re definitely pre-planned and pre-written. I’m not discounting that. I’m just saying that, while they sound fine and cool and dandy while they’re playing, I can never really recall much about them beyond their general sound afterwards, except that they were pretty cool, albeit similar to stuff I’ve heard before. They also have the problem THRAK had with lack of dynamics. You wanna drill my head open with your massive riffing? FINE! It’s much more effective when preceded by a quiet violin solo a-la “Lark’s Tongues, Part 1” or a pretty melodic vocal section a-la “Fallen Angel” to balance out the ass-kicking. And no, re-writing “Discipline” doesn’t count.
“Into the
Frying Pan” and “The World’s My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum” (no, I
didn’t make that title up) are the two “songs” that sandwich “FraKctured” in
the middle of the album. I enjoy the
“song” parts of “Frying Pan” that remind me vaguely of the catchiness of
“Dinosaur,” but the instrumental coda parts are just about half-assed rewrites
of every other instrumental on the album (this record is not one for fans of “diversity.”
You want something else besides heavy, distorted, vaguely electronic (In
2000! Yay for being behind the times!), loud instrumental jams? Find another album). “The World’s My Whatever…” is, not
surprisingly (given its ridiculous title), annoying as hell, though, despite
some fun, loud, distorted, vaguely electronic instrumental fun during its non
sing-songy parts (sensing a pattern?). I
understand the joke,
The three-part “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part 4” (AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!! Hot damn! That’s FOUR blatant self-references on the same album! Could that be some kind of world record? Let’s ask Mr. Guinness! *Gets drunk*) takes up much of what’s left of the record, and can safely be said to contain nothing you haven’t already heard, either on previous Crimson instrumentals or on this record itself. Just take all the band’s best instrumentals from the mid-seventies, toss in a dash of THRAK and stuff you heard twenty minutes before on “The ConstruKction of Light, Part 1” or something, and voila! YOU TOO can have a modern-day King Crimson metal instrumental! Is it entertaining in parts? Ofcourse it is! When the third part decides to replicate the hyper-distorted one-chord terrible aimlessness of “THRAK,” maybe it sucks, but the rest isn’t that bad. All of the instrumentals on this album, to a degree, are “good.” It’s just that, aside from maybe a few super guitar lines in “FraKctured,” they provide me with nothing that this band hasn’t done better before. And it’s all loud, all the time, like Fripp suddenly forgot what the word “dynamics” meant (or just hasn’t been able to recall it, since he had the same problem on THRAK). Thank god “Coda: I Have a Dream,” coming directly after “Larks’ Part 4,” totally kicks my ass with its Adrian distorto-vocals about “one giant leap…for mankiiiiiind!” Otherwise the repeated occurrence of the same three or four musical ideas through this entire album, despite the obvious prodigious playing talents of the four men involved, would just piss me off. As it is, the “bonus track” closer, “Heaven and Earth,” does piss me off in its aimlessness, but whatever. If you’re looking for a studio album that doesn’t make the current version of King Crimson look like a bunch of self-cannibalizing buffoons, this probably isn’t the one to get, but when they get cooking, like on the title track, “FraKctured,” and “Coda: I Have a Dream,” they can occasionally recall past glories instead of recalling how much better this band was twenty-five years ago. When it’s at its best, it also makes most modern metal look like a bunch of sissy-fag wanker bastards, so if you haven’t heard a King Crimson album before and thus you have no frame of reference, Donny, you’ll probably dig it.
The Power To Believe (2003)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Dangerous
Curves”
Marginally Bhetter than The ConstruKction of Light, just like that one was marginally better than THRAK before it, but, try as I might, the fact that the last ten minutes of this thing suck so incredibly hard precludes me from giving it a 7. Which means “The Mighty Crim” have now gone almost twenty-five years without making a studio album good enough to receive a rating higher than 6. That’s not too mighty, is it?
Oh well. This probably is the best thing they’ve done since Discipline (lord knows I haven’t even considered a rating higher than 6 for anything else), but it’s still not that great. It’s basically The ContruKction of Light, minus the blatant self-referentiality and a bit of useless distortion, but otherwise not really any better. After a little a-cappella intro thing that I think is kind of nice and pretty (ofcourse, the exact same thing reoccurs three more goddamn times), we’re plunged into (surprise!) a seven-minute prog-metal instrumental! Differences from the last album are: these tracks are a bit more structured, they employ a little less distortion (sometimes) than the last record, they’re a little less cluttered, and Mastelotto has fallen in love with his electro Aphex Twin stutter-drum doodads. Is “Level Five” cool? Damn right, it is. Very cool. For most of its duration, it’s probably the best instrumental track the band has come up with since “Larks’ Tongues, Part 3” on Three of a Perfect Pair. Cool lead line, interesting drumming (those electronic stutters can get annoying, and they’re sure as hell not “cutting edge” in the least in 2003, but they really add something to the rhythm), very good stuff all around. I just don’t know why the fuck it has to go into another “THRAK”-ripoff section about halfway through, especially considering “THRAK” was a giant pile of shit to begin with. I will never understand why Fripp continues to be enthralled with the idea of one fucking hyper-distorted shit chord repeating over and over and doing nothing interesting. It’s moronic.
And the other lengthy prog-metal wankathon instrumental, unfortunately, isn’t nearly as good. “Elektrik” begins with some sort of Moog flute intro which might be supposed to recall the really early days, for all I know, but doesn’t really do much for me, before morphing into a combination of yet another “Discipline” “fancy shimmering guitar interplay without doing anything else” rewrite and more of that “THRAK” two-chord bullshit, which I am really beginning to HATE. If you’re gonna distort your guitars to holy hell, that’s fine, Fripp (I dig it!), but play riffs when you do it. You don’t have to separate your guitar playing into “creative lines and riffs” and “aimless feedback ugliness” of the type you find in “Facts of Life (Intro)” (which is just horseshit, by the way). You can combine them, you know. It’s possible. Thirty years ago, you combined the two into one of the greatest heavy guitar packages the world has ever seen! Now you’re writing “Facts of Life,” which is nothing but semi-decent ugliness. Let’s take more of the hyper-distorted, non-interesting pointlessness of THRAK (you know, when Fripp turns up the distortion on his guitars on this record, it sounds like something off that pile of crud every single time) with more of those electro-stutter drums! Except this time, since the guitar riffs aren’t any good, the song just sounds like ass! I hear a few nice, creative parts in there, yes, but they sound EXACTLY like the lines in “Level Five!” Harrumph.
I’m probably being unfairly mean to Fripp here in concentrating on the negative. This album is produced better than anything since Discipline and sounds better than anything since then, too. Belew’s token ballad, “Eyes Wide Open,” is probably the best he’s come up with since, what, “Matte Kudasai?” Probably, yeah. And I do like most of “Level Five.” I just wish he’d avoid that THRAK-ripoff stuff, since, you know, it blows. Part 2 of the title track is a nice, though admittedly overlong, bit of atmosphere, with middle-eastern sounding stuff and, I dunno, bong water sounds or something, and the excellent “Dangerous Curves” is the best “Talking Drum”-rewrite the band’s ever done (well, the only one) in its repetition of one central rhythmic idea and subtle buildup of dynamics to an overflowing crescendo. These tracks are good stuff! This is the first of the three albums by the current version of the band where it seems they’re at least trying to make new, exciting, interesting music. Fripp is actually using contrasts and dynamics and crap again. My question is whether Fripp’s able to do it without dipping a little too obviously into his bag of self-cannibalizing tricks, since it’s been so long since he did (i.e. Discipline).
OK, like I said, the last ten minutes here are absolutely atrocious, and any chance the album has of getting a 7 are washed away completely the moment the utterly unfunny joke song “Happy With What You Have to be Happy With” comes on. They’re making fun of nu-metal! In 2003! Gee, didn’t see that one coming! I’ve been doing that for like five damn years. It’s just that I can’t write a song about it. Anyway, the song has lines like “And when I have some words, this is the way I’ll sing: through a distortion box to make them menacing!” and “We’re gonna need to have a chorus, and this seems to be as good as any other place to sing it till I'm blue in the face!” Get it? They’re basically mocking pop-song structure, and specifically clichéd nu-metal poseur structure, but the problem is that they’re King Crimson and they’re not funny. Though I find the “happy with what you have to be happy with you have to be happy with what you have to be happy with!” parts decent in their pseudo-syncopation, I find the song as a whole to be total crap, and Part 3 of the title track, which follows, to be worse. Is this the best Fripp can come up with in terms of a metal instrumental? It’s nothing but plodding, rhythmless complete bullshit. It speeds up and down with no rhyme or reason at all. It makes much of the material on THRAK feel like musical nirvana. It’s followed by two minutes of bad movie soundtrack synth dicking that are supposed to serve as its coda. It’s very, very bad.
Blargh. I wanted to like this album a lot. I really did. Most of “Level Five” rules, and “Dangerous Curves” is awesome. The production is neither weak THRAK nothingness nor over-cluttered, distorted ConstruKction of Light confusion. The band does not once make a conscious reference to its past in either its lyrics or song titles. So, logically, the album should be very good. But it’s not. I just don’t think they, and specifically Fripp, have it anymore, to be honest. They’re caught in the dreaded “old prog band nostalgia trip” Fripp would probably despise if he ever realized his band was in it. If Fripp were able to step out of his body for a moment and objectively look at Crimson as currently constituted, I think it’d be clear to him that they’re suffering from “ossification,” as he calls it. They still haven’t come up with anything totally original since Discipline. So is this what it’s come to? The great kings of evil, progressive metal made clowns of every time Tool releases something (though, admittedly, that happens like every eight years)? I’m not knocking Tool, you see (I’m a fan!), but Red-era Crimson would crush Maynard James Keenan to dust using only its left pinkie finger. However, power like that is difficult to harness, and nearly impossibly to get back once its lost.