Album title: In the Land of Grey and Pink
Artist: Caravan
Nationality: English
Label: Deram
Chronology: Third
Grade: A
Tracklisting: Golf Girl/ Winter Wine/ Love to Love You (And Tonight Pigs Will Fly)/ In the Land of Grey and Pink/ Nine Feet Underground (a) Nigel Blows a Tune (b) Love’s a Friend © Make it 76 (d) Dance of the Seven Paper Hankies (e)Hold Grandad by the Nose (f) Honest I did! (g) Dissociation (h) 100% Proof
Comments: Another big name from the Canterbury Scene, by 1971 Caravan were already pretty well established, but this would be their breakthrough album. Not that they ever broke through in any sort of chart/commercial sense, but this is the one fans and progheads remember most fondly. Sounds like trumpet opening “Golf Girl” and, yeah it is actually about golf. Ugh. Reminds me of Beatles style psychedelia honestly. Ok it’s not a trumpet but a trombone - I can never tell the difference. Flute there too, but the song has basically repeated. I think that could be violin? “Winter Wine” is a more pastoral (yeah I know but it tends to crop up a lot with the Canterbury Scene, as far as I can see) tune - oh but then it’s broken into a more boppy rhythm so maybe not.
Mellotron gives this track a least a more progressive rock feel than I have tended to see with many of the albums up to now. Some really nice electric piano I think it is too, quite like this. Keeping the tempo up for “Love to Love You (And Tonight Pigs Will Fly)” with a different vocalist, this time Pye Hastings (really? Pye?) instead of Richard Sinclair. Hastings has a more highly pitched voice which changes the style of the song entirely but I prefer Sinclair. It’s a happy, breezy tune with some not-annoying flute, and leads into the title track, which returns us to our regular singer. A slightly more low-key song that kinds of reminds me of Tull in some ways, like the bass line here, nice tinkling piano too from Richard’s cousin Dave.
The closer is almost twenty-three minutes long, and broken up into eight parts, with “Nine Feet Underground” opening on the longest of these, almost six minutes of “Nigel Blows a Tune”, mostly run on a warbly organ melody, nice and uptempo, sounding very Genesis if I’m honest, and it runs smoothly into “Love’s a Friend”, where we hear Hastings again, the second of only two vocal performances he contributes to the album, and one of only two vocal parts in this suite. There’s a sort of staggering instrumental then for “Make it 76”, keeping the organ front and centre, a short piece which then runs into an even shorter one. “Dance of the Seven Paper Hankies” slows everything down on a sort of stately rhythm, laid back and almost ambient, then a harder section for “Hold Grandad by the Nose” with some sharp, ringing guitar and slowing down again for “Honest I Did!”
The final vocal piece then sees Sinclair return for a nice little relaxed almost ballad in “Dissociation”, which puts me in mind of the Alan Parsons Project, specifically “Silence and I” and “Time”. The organ here is replaced by piano with some flute, then the suite ends on “100% Proof” with a final guitar flurry and the return of the organ, accompanied this time by the piano.
Favourite track(s): Nine Feet Underground
Least favourite track(s):
Overall impression: A huge improvement over the first two albums. To be honest, the first four tracks had me thinking yeah all right but… then once I had listened to “Nine Feet Underground” I realised why this album is so highly rated. A real prog masterpiece.
Personal Rating: 4.5
Legacy Rating: 5.0
Final Rating: 4.75