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| Hipgnosis |
Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Trilogy - Released 50 years ago today, July 6, 1972. This album and its follow-up, Brain Salad Surgery, are the ultimate peak of the legendary (or infamously) aristocratic and bombastic ELP. Easily a tighter, more-focused affair than the album that preceded it, 1971’s Tarkus. How many times have I heard ‘From the Beginning’ over the years? Maybe 10,000 times or so, yet that spacey outro never fails to send a chill down my spine. The perfect song for around Midnight. Another classic rock radio staple to this day is the wonderful take on Copland, ‘Hoedown.’ How I love that technicolor moment about three minutes into the title track when the tempo picks up pace dramatically, like Dorothy entering the Land of Oz. The closing march, ‘Abaddon’s Bolero,’ is pure bliss. Frankly, after not having played Trilogy from beginning-to-end and in one sitting in many years, I was a bit surprised by how much I enjoyed revisiting this record. ELP is not my absolute favorite band from the era, but this is an absolutely essential masterwork of 1970s Progressive and Classic Rock, no questions asked. (That cover, on the other hand, is hideous. There was a strange trend of bands consisting of pale, skinny, ugly white guys posing shirtless for publicity photos and album covers at that time.)
GRADE: A
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