MICHEL COLOMBIER — Wings (review)

MICHEL COLOMBIER — Wings album cover Album · 1971 · Third Stream Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Atavachron
While most listeners may associate or even confuse Michel Colombier's craggy, soulful voice and compositions with Blood, Sweat & Tears and their famous frontman David Clayton-Thomas (or by way of influence The Buckinghams), Colombier was an artist unto himself as well as a more rounded and realized progressive/jazz musician who not only sung-up a storm, but developed some of the best progressive brass-jazzrock ever recorded. And with some very good help from the brilliant songsmith Paul Williams, singer-lyricist Lani Hall, and a fully orchestrated ensemble that brought the power, his 1971 extravaganza 'Wings' is a shamefully ignored LP.

Brimming with theater and stage-set mellodramatics, the '71 release is a fully realized example of the deep possibilities of what progressive popular music had become, Colombier gingerly reaching out with 'Freedom and Fear's dizzied arrangements hitting on myriad forms, setting the bold tone of this LP, merging seamlessly into instrumentals 'Earth' and 'Thalassa'. Paul Williams' fabulous nasal toy-doll vocals lead the moody & slightly Beatlesesque 'Doesn't Anybody Know?', both a product of its era and yet setting itself apart with unexpected darkness and Herbie Hancock piano play circa '71.

'Pourquoi Pas?' and 'Morning is Come Again' sneaks up on us without warning, has surprising frenetic horn-play and deep chorales, one of the best passages here, and 'For Those Who Cannot Hear' is troubled reflection as is Lani Hall's 'We Could be Flying' putting us squarely in the audience of some experimental theater piece that surely closed the same week hosting tiny but appreciative onlookers. Morose 'Emmanuel' and Herb Alpert's 'All in All' say goodbye with some sweet sentiment and a touch of Hair as our nightcap.

One day almost every fan of symphonic jazz/pop will come around to this sort of rarefied time in merged music, and this effort will hit them suddenly, tragically, surprising them with its startling brilliance and with a moment missed but loved all over again.

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