King Crimson: Islands : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

King Crimson would like you to think that they're strange, but they're not. What they are is a semi-eclectic British band with a penchant for fantasy and self-indulgence whose banally imagistic lyrics are only matched by the programmatic imagery of their music. They work with myth, mystification and mellotrons to take you, if your imagination is short and your attention span long, on one of those "trips" Life magazine used to claim for the folkbound likes of the Airplane and Dead. They happened to be better at it than almost any of the current competition, laying out their dreamscapes with technical facility of a rare high level, even if their basic concept hasn't altered much through four albums.

In the Court of the Crimson King came complete with backslap hype from Pete Townshend, and indeed "20th Century Schizoid Man" was a searingly exciting piece of jazz-infused neuroto-rock, and probably the best thing they've ever recorded. The rest of the album seemed to wander off into alternately spacey and waterlogged stretches of nonspecific sound that was just too pretentious and "experimental" to grab onto. There was no "20th Century Schizoid Man" on In the Wake of Poseidon, although they had at least come to grips with the problem of whether to immerse themselves in the metaphysical absolutes of (musical) space or water by opting for the latter. Despite all the dalliance with myth, as if that were any more than some Marvel Comix type fun (not that it should be any more, but at least Stan Lee has some substance), it must be said that basically it was blah, mundane, a lot of mush. Lizard fared better, especially for some well-timed cops from Charlie Mingus, but for my taste there were still too many holes in the realm for me to wanna doff my beanie to the King and become a full-fledged citizen.

Islands is another vague, arty project that almost comes together as a concept album, almost makes it as a fusion of jazz & rock & folk & corn, and ultimately ends up closer to the most tenderly anaesthetizing muzak than any kind of tooth-grating annoyance. Which is too bad, because "20th Century Schizoid Man" was the kind of highstrung sound that verges on sheer pain but ends up pure satisfaction because it pushes, rants and sizzles with such uncompromising persistence, and there are indications in this album that they are still capable of creating that kind of beautiful tension.

The music is, if anything, more programmatic than ever. "Formentera Lady" mystifies with some rather muskily involuted lyrics, and sounds to me, with its mix of bowed bass, flute, piano wash and female soprano singing without words, like the musical description of a camel caravan headin' for the ole watering hole, the perfect definition of Rock Exotique. The lyrics mention Odysseus and Circe at one point, but King Crimson always did have their mythic metaphors rather mixed.

"Sailor's Tale" is a mild jazz-derivative arrangement vaguely reminiscent of some Zappa stuff like "King Kong," meant to be charging but somehow falling comfortably into the background. "The Letter" is just an old-fashioned soap opera set to lumbering, churning vats of musical tar, with lyrics worth quoting if not much else: "With quill and silver knife/She carved a poison pen/Wrote to her lover's wife/'Your husband's seed has fed my flesh.'" And then the poor cuckoldette commits suicide. What is all this quasi-Victorian / Shakespearean doggerel, anyway? Are the British trying to get back to their roots? Irritating as I find it, the music is good.

"Ladies of the Road" is the best song on the album–an elegantly punk macho trip ("Stone headed Frisco spacer/Ate all the meat I gave her/Said would I like to taste hers/And even craved the favour./'Like marron-glaced fish bones ...'") featuring a beautifully obscene sax solo. "Prelude: Song of the Gulls," with its pizzicato strings and delicate oboe waftings, sounds like a commercial for a vaginal deodorant. But it's only in the final, title track, all 9:14 of "Islands," that King Crimson get to the best of their music and the heart of their dilemma. It's a pastoral, lyrical, open - ended and open-tuned piece that washes over you like slow tides or an extra-warm bath late in the evening, and just like that bath it has a tendency to put you to sleep in the tenderest, most sanguine way. In fact, I recommend it for that very purpose, with no sarcasm intended. Islands wins the Award of the Month, and perhaps of the Year, for Best Last Record To Put On Before Retiring.

But if they continue at this pace and fail to recapture some of their primal drive, I may sleep right through the next one.