Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Manfred Mann's Earth Band (Prog-Rock 1972)

Most folks know Manfred Mann from his '60s hits, but too few have ever heard the brilliant Manfred Mann's Earth Band album. Exploring arty and progressive directions, the Earth Band was a wholly different group from Mann's earlier lineup. Unlike the heavier art rock groups that would follow (Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Yes), the Earth Band never became burdened by its own seriousness.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band combines hypnotic instrumentals ("Tribute"), exhilarating original songs ("Captain Bobby Stout"), and three definitive covers all laden with hooks worthy of "Do Wah Diddy Diddy." Mann mines Dylan's basement tapes again for "Please Mrs. Henry" (see "Quinn the Eskimo" and "Get Your Rocks Off" on other releases). An obscure Dr. John song, "Jump Sturdy" nearly jumps off the record. The synthesizer solo "Sloth" segues into the album's centerpiece, "Living Without You." With its thumping bassline and "So hard" chorus, this might be the best version of a Randy Newman song ever recorded. Closing the album, the Mann himself takes vocal turns on "Part Time Man" and "Up & Leaving," quiet acoustic tales that contrast with the complex instrumentals of the rest of the record. On whole, Manfred Mann's Earth Band is a completely satisfying album and one of the most underrated of the '70s.

AMG Review by J.P. Ollio

Camel - Rain Dances (1977 Prog-Rock)

The band's fifth release, Rain Dances is Camel at its best, offering the most consistent and representative package in their saga. The addition of Caravan-cofounder Richard Sinclair proves profitable, as do a few colorist touches by Brian Eno on "Elke." Mel Collins' woodwinds are among the highlights, especially on "Tell Me" and the title track. From beginning to end, this project flows gracefully.

AMG Review by Matthew Plichta

Steely Dan - Aja (Wonderful Jazz-Rock 1977)

Steely Dan hadn't been a real working band since Pretzel Logic, but with Aja, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's obsession with sonic detail and fascination with composition reached new heights. A coolly textured and immaculately produced collection of sophisticated jazz-rock, Aja has none of the overt cynicism or self-consciously challenging music that distinguished previous Steely Dan records. Instead, it's a measured and textured album, filled with subtle melodies and accomplished, jazzy solos that blend easily into the lush instrumental backdrops. But Aja isn't just about texture, since Becker and Fagen's songs are their most complex and musically rich set of songs — even the simplest song, the sunny pop of "Peg," has layers of jazzy vocal harmonies. In fact, Steely Dan ignores rock on Aja, preferring to fuse cool jazz, blues, and pop together in a seamless, seductive fashion. It's complex music delivered with ease, and although the duo's preoccupation with clean sound and self-consciously sophisticated arrangements would eventually lead to a dead end, Aja is a shining example of jazz-rock at its finest.

AMG Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Walkabouts - New West Motel (1993 Indie Rock)

The double-album New West Motel bears more than a passing similarity to the work of Neil Young (whose "Like a Hurricane" gets covered here), thanks to its edgy juxtaposition of blistering guitar workouts and plaintive acoustic cuts.

AMG Review by Jason Ankeny

Waterboys - A Pagan Place (2nd album Alternative Rock 1984)

On their second album, A Pagan Place, the Waterboys turn Celtic folk-rock into a monumental fusion of Van Morrison's poetry, arena rock, and Phil Spector's monolithic wall of sound. Mike Scott's ideas are simply too grand to be executed properly, yet A Pagan Place has enough thrilling moments to make his embarrassing missteps forgivable.

AMG Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Fleetwood Mac - Bare Trees (Beautiful Blues-Rock 1972)

Arguably the first consistently strong album Fleetwood Mac ever recorded -- all the way back into the Peter Green/Jeremy Spencer era, the Mac's albums had previously consisted of individual moments of brilliance in a sea of uninspired filler -- 1972's Bare Trees is also the album where the band finally defines its post-blues musical personality. Low-key but less narcoleptically mellow than 1971's sleepy Future Games, Bare Trees is a singer/songwriter album in the traditional early-'70s style, backed up with just enough musical muscle to keep from sounding like weedy soft rock in the manner of Bread or Cat Stevens. This is the one Fleetwood Mac album on which singer/guitarist Danny Kirwan is the dominant figure, writing five songs to Chistine McVie and Bob Welch's two apiece. Impressively, all three writers get off a small masterpiece on side two; McVie's "Spare Me a Little of Your Love" sounds like a dry run for the string of hits she would start writing with 1975's Fleetwood Mac, and it's her first really good pop song. By comparison, Kirwan and Welch's best songs are all-time career highlights. Kirwan's "Dust" combines a gentle, gliding melody with resigned, melancholy lyrics and his most memorable chorus. Welch's "Sentimental Lady" was, of course, his first solo hit in its 1977 re-recorded version, but this original take is far superior, and one of the great lost pop songs of the early '70s. Outfitted with a terrific vocal melody, hooks galore, and an impressive tremolo guitar solo, "Sentimental Lady" is perhaps a little trite lyrically, but it's a heartfelt and lovable tune regardless, and the best thing Fleetwood Mac did in the years between "Albatross" and "Over My Head." The rest of the album is less magical, but the instrumental "Sunny Side of Heaven" and the downright funky "Danny's Chant" are impressive in their use of atmospheric arrangements and so point toward the subtle but effective production choices that would make Fleetwood Mac and Rumours among the most listenable albums of their time. Bare Trees isn't in that league, but it shows that after five years of false starts and failed experiments, Fleetwood Mac were finally on their way.

AMG Review by Stewart Mason

Eric Burdon & the Animals - Winds of Change (1967 Psychedelia)

Winds of Change opened the psychedelic era in the history of Eric Burdon & the Animals -- although Burdon's drug experiences had taken a great leap forward months earlier with his first acid trip, and he and the group had generated some startlingly fresh-sounding singles in the intervening time, it was Winds of Change that plunged the group headfirst into the new music. The record was more or less divided into two distinctly different sides, the first more conceptual and ambitious psychedelic mood pieces and the second comprised of more conventionally structured songs, although even these were hard, mostly bluesy and blues-based rock, their jumping-off point closer to Jimi Hendrix than Sonny Boy Williamson. The band's new era opened with waves washing over the title track, which included sitar and electric violin, while Burdon's voice, awash in reverb, calmly recited a lyric that dropped a lot of major names from blues, jazz, and rock. "Poem by the Sea" was a recitation by Burdon, amid a swirl of echo-drenched instruments, and it led into one of the group's handful of memorable covers from this period, "Paint It Black" -- driven by John Weider's electric violin and Vic Briggs' guitar, and featuring an extended vocal improvisation by Burdon, their approach to the song was good enough to make it part of the group's set at the Monterey International Pop Festival that June, and also to get a spot in the documentary movie that followed. "The Black Plague" opens with a Gregorian chant structure that recalls "Still I'm Sad" by the Yardbirds, and was another vehicle for Burdon's surreal spoken contributions. There were also, as with most of the group's work from this period, a few easily accessible tracks that could make good singles, in this instance "Good Times" and "San Franciscan Nights," a Top Ten record in various countries around the world in the last quarter of 1967, although, as Alan Clayson points out in his notes, the latter song was overlooked in England for nearly 12 months after its release elsewhere, and then appeared as the B-side to the relatively straightforward, brooding, moody rocker "Anywhere." Burdon was so inspired by Jimi Hendrix's music that he wrote one of the psychedelic era's rare "answer" songs, "Yes I Am Experienced," as an homage to the guitarist; the latter's influence could also be heard in "It's All Meat," the LP's closing track, and a song that calls to mind an aspect of this band that a lot of scholars in earlier years overlooked -- the fact that Briggs, Weider, et al. had the skills to make music in that style that was convincing and that worked on record, on their terms.

AMG Review by Bruce Eder