Anyway - FAMILY***

Good News Bad News/Willow Tree/Holding The Compass/Strange Band/Part Of The Load/ Anyway/Normans/ Lives & Ladies

The Anyway album from British progressive rockers Family, was a half studio and half live release, recorded in 1970 at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon. Includes the UK No. 11 hit single Strange Band. (UK:7)

"This album was released when they were still in their ascendancy and although uneven in parts gives a pretty strong flavour of what they were about. Good News Bad News is great but the highlight is Part Of The Load. This still holds up pretty well today. Good to interesting."

"I find Family to be an acquired taste, due largely to Roger Chapman's odd tremolo filled vocal. Also the material on this album, while falling pretty much into the rock format, has a lot of unusual chord sequences that make it hard to latch onto at first." "Half live, half studio - half wild, half gentle. Perhaps more 'interesting' than 'entertaining'. But perhaps not..."

"The studio tracks almost flow together as a suite of unusual, challenging but very rewarding songs that typified Family. If there is a quintessential Family song in the unreal variety of their work, that may be the title track. The vocal and instrumental backing seem to be going in different directions, both complex, with an unusual rhythm to boot. Yet it holds together beautifully. Lots of violin touches, a bit of vibes and Roger Chapman alternatively bellowing and crooning. All in all, certainly one of my Family favourites. No one who enjoys Family should be without this one."

"Good News Bad News is perhaps the best song Family ever did. The rest of the album, while still demonstrating very strong songwriting, also does what they started on the Song For Me LP - moving to some kind of 'their own style' pub rock - in terms of attitude, performance and even recording quality. So the songs are good, but the magic of the early albums is gone."

"A masterful album that should have proved the catalyst to finer things, but for some reason the band never quite fulfilled their remarkable potential."

"What a wild, strange shambles of an album, chaotic hard rock and sweet progressive with some almost country elements all fused together. Not necessarily a great album, but very interesting. Strange Band is uncommonly heavy."