1. 21st Century Schizoid Man - I thought I was pretty familiar with and liked this song. I must’ve been listening to a radio edit. The intro and all of the parts with vocals are great, but the long instrumental section in the middle loses me a bit. I’m not anti long instrumental sections… I went to 8 damn Rush concerts. But this is a little too close to free jazz for my taste. Still adds up to a great song, even if the ponderous instrumental takes it from a perfect song down to a merely great one. 4/5 2. I Talk to the Wind - Didn’t expect there to be so much clarinet on this album. Also flutes. Kind of pleasant. Also ponderous. Not what I was expecting from an album credited with giving birth to progressive metal. 2/5 3. Epitaph - still with the flutes!!!! That said, this is way more what I was expecting from this record - there’s a haunting moodiness that makes it feel super timeless. The chord progression is really effective, and the way King Crimson uses the mellotron on this record is unreal. 4.5/5 4. Moonchild - The title is threatening me with some hippy dippy bullshit. And it’s 12 minutes long. On paper, this doesn’t look promising. For the actual listening experience, I can’t decide whether I find the vocal melody kind of haunting or kind of goofy in that vaguely medieval way that makes me unable to take a lot of prog seriously. Once the vocals end, oh boy does it get ponderous - to the point of it sounding less like an instrumental section, and more like they had the tape rolling as the band sat down and noodled for a few minutes before playing for real. Like this song is 12 minutes long and once the vocals end, it’s as if they’re just running out the clock to get to a full 45 mins. Yikes. 1/5 5. The Court of the Crimson King - Among the best openings of a song ever. The drum fill, the mellotron melody. Ugh. It’s so good. …and then there’s a flute interlude? God dammit. On a positive note, the vaguely medieval vocal melody actually works in the context of this song. Clearly the best song on the album and you can understand why it’s so effective as a movie soundtrack, but it’s still undermined a bit by the ponderousness in the middle. 4/5 Overall: This record is substantially more mellow than I was expecting. I know not all early prog is quite as aggressive as what came later, but with 21st Century Schizoid Man as a starting point, I would’ve expected more bite and fewer woodwinds throughout. On the whole, it embodies some of what I like about more proggy music, as well as much of what repels me from that genre. There are moments of transcendence, the musicianship is pretty much flawless, and I can imagine that the stylistic development must have been mind blowing in the late 60s. But it’s also so ponderous in spots, and even the two great songs that bookend the record get sidetracked with momentum-killing interludes. That thought that “this is probably way better if you’re high” kept popping up for me, and I kind of resent music that needs extra assistance to be impactful. No shade to getting high, but the best psychedelia still works even when you’re sober. So, I guess I admire how groundbreaking and influential it was in its day, and there are stretches that are really hit, but listening to the whole record required far more patience than I would’ve expected.
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