Thursday 25 April 2019

Cricklewood Green - TEN YEARS AFTER*****

Sugar The Road/Working On The Road/50000 Miles Beneath My Brain/Year 3000 Blues/Me & My Baby/Love Like A Man/Circles/As The Sun Still Burns Away

With Cricklewood Green blues-rock group Ten Years After, led by virtuoso guitarist Alvin Lee, deliver their most highly regarded album. Includes the UK top ten hit Love Like A Man. (US:14 UK:4)

"This is their masterpiece. Psychedelic blues-rock was rarely, if ever, this good. Alvin and the boys were at the peak of their powers and it shows. Love Like A Man and Circles back to back go from massive guitar hard rock to magical psychedelic rock. For me, blues-rock has never been better."

"Ten Years After's first great album. Awesome songs and a great overall consistency. Just the right amount of psychedelic rock and roll blues. Love Like A Man, Sugar The Road, Me And My Baby are just a few of my favourites songs. It sounds clichéd but they just don't make 'em like this anymore."

"Ten Years After, with front-man Alvin Lee, made a good handful of solid blues/rock albums in the late sixties and early seventies. Alvin Lee is a terrific guitarist, and he had the reputation of being the fastest in the world at the time, when Ten Years After were at the height of their popularity. Lee wrote almost all of their music, and he had a skill of writing catchy blues based guitar riffs. One of their best known songs of this type Love Like A Man is the key track on this album. Though his songwriting is somewhat uneven, probably because of pressure to constantly to come up with material for new albums and singles, their best songs still sound great today."

"It took Ten Years After a few years to make a decent album that would be memorable and showcase the band’s talent on vinyl, but with Cricklewood Green they finally seem to have gotten the balance between song structure and cohesive performance right. Cricklewood Green is a tight all round album after so many off kilter excursions. Alvin Lee combines both his songwriting and playing talents to great effect. Working On The Road is about the best track I have ever heard concerning life in a rock band."

"The best stuff here, are the longer tunes, especially 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain, which for my money sports Lee's best work on the album, although Love Like A Man runs a close second. It would be easy to lose a band like this among the plethora of psychedelic/blues bands coming out of England in the late 60s. If you love good rock and roll guitar, Ten Years After should not be missed, this is one of their best."

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