Fotheringay (A&M)

My copy of this is so beat-to-shit that it's buried in surface noise, and skips a good it bit too. I actually fear for the safety of my stylus and thus rarely listen to it. Also, despite being a pretty solid record, I never get any craving to hear it. This picks up where you'd expect it to - taking the Fairport sound but bringing in a stronger Dylan/Band influence, most obvious in the cover of 'Too Much of Nothing but also on 'Winter Winds', a less languid but otherwise derivative take on the 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' vibe. Co-lead vocalist (and Denny's husband) Trevor Lucas sounds pretty good against Denny; the timbre of his voice isn't a million kilometres away from Richard Thompson's, though, so this feels precisely like the second act it is. Additionally, naming your band after one of your iconic songs from your last band can't help but cast a cloud over whatever you do next. Through all the static I can hear how nicely this is produced; a good drum sound, lots of reverb on the guitar lines, and the voices soaring above it all. I think they only ever made this one record; Denny went solo with the excellent The North Star Grassman and the Ravens and I don't know whatever happened to Lucas. It's all what one might expect from a Fairport Convention spinoff, and that's perfectly OK. Denny's perfect touch is why this is remarkable; the Lucas-led songs barely stand out. There's some nice electric guitar leads, but it's the wispy, rolling Fairport sound that I like the most; Denny's 'The Pond and the Stream' being a great example of this. The cover art is pretty bonkers when you stop to actually look at it; on my beaten, faded copy it feels strangely, I dunno, authoritative.

Arti e Mestieri - 'Quinto Stato' (Cramps)

Oh yes, now I remember why I keep Tilt in my accumulation -- because compared to Quinto Stato, it's a fucking masterpiece. Now I try to resist the prevailing prejudices of our time when listening to music. For example certain styles of music might be seen as "cheesy" right now that will probably be popular again in a few years. It's hard not to have your tastes dictated by your formative early years, and to fight against those tastes and see the true artistic value of something like, I dunno, David Sanborn records (which bear an uncanny resemblance to Quinto Stato, not in style but in effect). And I think I've already shown across the last 56 posts that I am quite forgiving of prog/fusion/whatever excesses. (Get used to it, cause we're going to encounter a lot more before we hit Z.) But try as I might, I just can't find anything redeeming about this album. I purchased it no doubt alongside Tilt, thinking I was scoring two awesome Italian prog records at once (when the reality is that I ended up with about 0.4 records worth of decency). This is a few years later, by which point the band has augmented themselves with one Rudy Passuello to sing on 3 songs, transforming the commercial tendencies of their jazz-fusion sound into full-blown pop-fusion. I made a promise that I would listen to the entirety of every LP in the accumulation for Dislocated Underbite Spinal Alphabetical Encourager Templates, and I have stuck to it. But this one was by far the most difficult to complete. Passuello's voice is nothing special, but it really hurts in the context of the rest of the band. On 'Vicolo' he's relegated to the bassoon, which is called 'fagotto' in Italian - I promised myself I wasn't going to point that out, but I couldn't resist. So what is redeeming about this LP? The photos! Whether it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek or not, I can't tell, both the gatefold and inner sleeve are adorned with photos of the band looking tough, smoking joints, and best of all, taking a piss against the wall while flipping off the camera. The bird-flipper is wearing a studded leader vest in all the photos, adorned with a moustache, chains and rings and looking rather like an overweight Italian version of Lemmy. In one photo he's even lifted his shirt up to show us his beer belly. I'm hoping this is Mr. Passeullo himself, but the credits are ambiguous. The photos are amazing, particularly given how un-tough the music is, but it's not enough to save Quinto Stato from my "get rid of" pile. Offers are accepted via the comments feature, of course.