Saturday 24 February 2018

Kayak - Kayak II (1974)


The second album from these Dutch legends.

Kayak was a quintet with a lineup of mellotron, guitars, bass, drums, percussions, harpsichord, organ, piano, fender rhodes, accordion, harmonica, marimba and vocals.
A string quartet also added their strings to this album.

I very much liked their 1973 debut album See See The Sun. You can read my review here.

The band followed up with this album. An album where the Yes influences is a bit toned down. But we get a lot more Supertramp and Genesis influences than on their debut album.

It is fair to say that the band had their own sound and take on symphonic prog now. They and the other big Dutch symphonic prog band from that era, Earth & Fire.

There are also some harder rock here. But most of the album are mid-tempo to pastoral. The music is dominated by piano and organs. That and some very good vocals.

Some of the music is pretty commercial too. There are some catchy tunes here.

This thirty-seven minutes long album has one nine minutes long song and eight other more punchy songs. Punchy and effective. All songs fits each other.

There is no really great songs here and I am a bit in two minds about giving this a good or a very good rating. But I feel this is a very good album and one to check out. Go so forth.

3.5 points

 

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