POP RECORDS
Rivieras of the mind
DUNCAN FALLOWELL
Caravan : In the Land of Grey and Pink (Deram £2.29). Since nature appears to be foregoing a summer this year, it might be just as well to fake up your own. A potting shed would do but a conservatory is preferable. Jug of iced mint juleps left, sunlamp fierce from the right, you in the middle flung rather precariously into a fringed hammock with one blotchy white leg dropped over the side and someone obliginly putting on this record. The first side contains four of the best things of their kind I have heard in a long time; good clear songs, beautifully played, supple but muscly, nurserylandish but not effete, original but effortless and friendly. The Arthur Rackham style cover — pink, white and grey — is absolutely right and the whole rather reminds me of a slab of coconut-ice, gritty and sweet ingredients blended to just the degree at which they acquire a pliable pithy sharpness. If only " delightful " could sound genuinely unpatronising, I'd use it.
The Radha Krsna Temple (Apple £2.15). We've all seen them busking up and down Oxford Street or trapped incongruously in the Tube, saffron robes faded to a pale Nordic apricot. They are just one very obvious example of the impact the east is increasingly having on the western consciousness, thank God, and it does make a change to get down to more-or-less-brass tacks after those " Yehudi meets Ravi " records. All music is authentic but slightly touched up by George Harrison and Mukunda Das Adhikary which makes it seem less so. The first track, Govincla, is very catchy which is presumably the idea, although I think someone really keen on Indian music — and there are a lot of them/ us — would prefer to go straight for "the real thing," however bogus such distinc tions may be. Translations of the texts have been supplied from the works of the movement's founder, his Divine Grace Something Unpronounceable.
Procol Harum : Broken Barricades (Chrysalis £2.15). Procol Harum's multi-million international best-selling smash hit single, A Whiter Shade of Pale, did more harm than good after the first hundred thousand dollars had worn off. After it nothing went right. Then, over the last eight months or %o, it becomes increasingly fashionable to praise them to the skies as one of the best half-dozen English groups now playing, ruthlessly neglected. I think that is a bit passionate : I would say one of the best dozen. This album has class, true quality, and I do not mean Mr Showbiz Sammy Davis ba-ba-ba-ing to an audience of sun withered, blue-rinsed, gin-sodden millionairesses at the Fontainebleau, Miami. What I do mean is that high musical ambitions have been perfectly realised in the actual music; it might be altered but it could not be improved. Their new album encompasses such a wide range of moods that it is impossible to summarise in a phrase. Let me simply say that when it comes to living it up in a hammock Procol Harum are right there with you.
Paladin (Bronze £2.15). Still in the summer-at-any-price mood, you might well try this, that is if the ultra-violet has not reduced your tan to cinders or the drink swallowed you up altogether. Again, what is so attractive is the tight and cheerful exuberance of the playing coupled with good fresh songs. So often middle-of-theroad rock groups are boring beyond belief but this album has that extra spark of thought and precision to keep it alive from beginning to end. A fine band.
Emerson, Lake and Palmer : Tarkus (Island £2.15). As kif looms large on the horizon, some gloriously, magnificently thrilling noises to remind you that it is not juleps, juleps all the way.
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