EMERSON LAKE AND PALMER — Trilogy (review)

EMERSON LAKE AND PALMER — Trilogy album cover Album · 1972 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Warthur
Vastly more consistent than Tarkus, but lacking a song that quite reaches the height of that album's famed epic of war and space armadillos, Trilogy is I think my favourite of the two simply because, like the debut, it's an Emerson Lake and Palmer album I can listen to from beginning to end. The novelty track on here, The Sheriff, isn't quite as goofy as Jeremy Bender or Benny the Bouncer - not only does it not irritate me like the other two do, I even find myself quite liking it. And as for the more serious material, From the Beginning is one of Greg Lake's better ballads, the opening Endless Enigma/Fugue/Endless Enigma triple-whammy is wonderful, and Trilogy itself is a great workout for all the band members.

The one downside to this album is Emerson's keyboard sound. We all know Keith loved to incorporate as many new and innovative synthesisers onto ELP albums as possible, and I suspect most prog fans wouldn't have it any other way; however, I think a few of the synths and keys deployed on here were not quite ready for primetime - either in terms of the hardware, or simply in terms of people figuring out how to make them sound good. There's points where the synthesiser sound on the album has aged badly - this is most notable in some sections of Abbadon's Bolero, where some of the synths sound like cheesy 80s Casio keyboards mimicing old Dr Who incidental music. Of course, at the time it must have sounded revolutionary... but listening to it 40 years after the fact, it gets pretty cheesy.

Still, like I said this is the most consistent album ELP managed to do after their debut, so four stars.
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