26 June : Fire and Water

A few days ago, I got a message from my friend Malcolm saying that he found it amusing that my entries here are becoming shorter and more dismissive of albums I don’t like. This is, I think, true.

But surely Ian, you ask, you can’t be considering being dismissive of the third album by one of the UK’s great bands, the album that gave us Alright Now. Well, no, not exactly; but that’s because I neither like nor dislike it; I just find it a bit >meh<

On the plus side, like all of Free’s recorded output, the music feels like it has some heft. The playing is first class, and the production leaves plenty of space between the instruments: room for the songs to breathe. The problem is that the songs aren’t especially good: Alright Now is the best thing on it.

I venture that, had I been supine on the floor of a student flat in 1970, heavy-limbed and stoned after a session on Red Leb of dubious origins, I would probably have enjoyed the album; as it is, on a sunny evening in Edinburgh in 2020, I’m underwhelmed.

Spotify and YouTube, of course.