|
|
Al Stewart Album: “Love Chronicles”
| Album Information : |
|---|
|
|
Release Date:1969-01-01
|
|
Type:Unknown
|
|
Genre:Folk, Big Hits Of The '70s
|
|
Label:
|
|
Explicit Lyrics:Yes
|
|
UPC:074644853520
|
Review - :
{$Al Stewart}'s second album is most renowned for the 18-minute title track, an autobiographical recount of different love affairs with guitar by {$Jimmy Page}. That track was also quite controversial for its day in its use of the word "f*cking" at one point in the lyrics, though that's not typical of the tone of the composition. It's actually not the best of the six songs on the record, which saw {$Stewart} wisely discard the orchestration of his debut in favor of fairly straight-ahead {\folk-rock} backing. {&"Ballad of Mary Foster"} is {$Stewart}'s best early song, as a two-part suite neatly divided between brusque cynical commentary on a bourgeois English family and the introspective musings of the ravaged wife. That second part bears considerable similarity in melody and tempo, incidentally, to sections of the far more famous {$Stewart} song {&"Roads to Moscow."} The rest of the album has additional solid vignettes in the standard gentle yet detached {$Stewart} mold, the best of them being {&"Life and Life Only,"} which exploits his knack for insistent, repetitive minor-keyed hooks. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
|
|
