Back to Where it All Began

At last I've arrived at the album that inspired my journey into prog album reviews. One of the tracks from Caravan's In the Land of Grey and Pink (1971) came up in a prog playlist I found in my early days as a Spotify listener, and I've been off-and-on obsessed with this album ever since. I always come back to it and imagine I always will. My reviews began as a hunt for another album as great as this one, and I’ve had some successes so far.

A few reviews back, I identified Renaissance's Ashes are Burning (1973) as the most pleasant album on Rolling Stone's top 50 prog list. But In the Land of Grey and Pink gives it a run for its money. Like Ashes Are Burning, there is a strong folk element running through this album. A pastoral quality is carried by the shifting tones of Dave Sinclair's various clavichords. Jimmy Hastings's flute and piccolo accents. Pye Hastings’s and Richard Sinclair's syrupy vocals complete the mood. A dreamlike quality pervades the album, probably an acid dream given the lyrics, album art, and Pye Hastings's psychedelic-influenced guitar work.

Everything fits together so smoothly, with life and harmony buoying up every moment. I can get lost in this album, and it speaks to me in a way that I imagine the late 60s folk and pop scene spoke to so many. A lot of music from that era is cloying, or simplistic, or just doesn't sound great from a production standpoint. Yet, Caravan here takes great advantage of what I like about that era of music - the joy and the experimentalism that comes from looser affiliations of genre that can mix rock guitar, jazzy drumming, classical piano and strings, and theatrical vocals with lyrics that don't have to mean anything at all.

Freedom and silliness and musical bliss are all that matters.

Charting the Land of Grey and Pink

The opening track is a case study in everything that works about these combinations. The lyrics are nonsense about a golf girl who offers cups of tea to the singer - how British! There's some romance and then it rains golf balls for some reason.

The song opens with a farcical trombone riff that leads into a staccato rhythm led by acoustic jazz chords. Some wood block dominates the chorus, and the solo section introduces whining synths that give way back to that silly trombone. But the song is sung with such earnestness, and the instrumentation in the verses is tight and serious. The outro features some triumphant flute that carries forward the theme of romantic euphoria that the song celebrates. There's nothing but fun and happiness here, and it's great.

"Winter Wine" offers some minor key counterpoint sandwiched between the more upbeat “Golf Girl” and “Love to Love You” (a forgettable piece as fluffy as the title suggests). "Winter Wine" is a nostalgic tune where thoughts of romance lead to deeper memories about a mystical past of fairy tale lands and dream worlds. "Golf Girl" is also a sort of dream narrative, so by the second track, a clear theme forms. Lovey-dovey verses and choruses dealing with romance and dreams are spaced out with extended instrumental bits that carry those feelings forward when words won't suffice.

These instrumental sections are the highlight of the album; fortunately, they are many.

The title track, like “Winter Wine,” is a little downbeat, but it is just a stream of conscious fairy tale involving “grumbly grimblies” climbing down chimneys and warnings to not “leave your dad out in the rain.” “In the Land of Grey and Pink” is as silly and trippy as the album gets, but the music is intense and moving. The twinkly piano solo in the middle of the track is a thing of beauty. Although it is slight and airy, it rivals Supertramp's “School” for great keyboard solos. The shift to Mellotron in the middle is typical of the album and one of its many joys.

The fifth and final track, “Nine Feet Underground,” represents an entire side as it's a suite of mostly instrumental pieces that never lets up. Alternately Jazzy and rocky—and uncharacteristically heavy toward the end—the song fully showcases the talents of all the band members and takes the listener away to Caravan's dreamland.

This review feels less eloquent or focused than my others. I'm not surprised because In the Land of Grey and Pink is indescribably beautiful.

Rolling Stone Rankings

1. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

2. King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King

3. Rush - Moving Pictures

4. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

5. Yes – Close to the Edge

6. Genesis - Selling England by the Pound

7. Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick

8. Can - Future Days

9. Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

10. Yes - Fragile

11. Rush - Hemispheres

12. ELP - Brain Salad Surgery

13. Pink Floyd - Animals

14. Genesis - Foxtrot

15. King Crimson - Red

16. Gentle Giant - Octopus

17. Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

18. Frank Zappa - One Size Fits All

19. Premiata Forneria Marconi - Per Un Amico

20. King Crimson - Larks’ Tongue in Aspic

21. Camel - Mirage

22. Rush - 2112

23. Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

24. Magma - Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh

25. The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium

26. Van Der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts

27. Supertramp - Crime of the Century

28. Opeth - Blackwater Park

29. Dream Theater - Metropolis, Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory

30. U.K. - U.K.

31. Renaissance - Ashes Are Burning

32. Kansas - Leftoverture

33. TOOL - Lateralus

34. Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink

ASK Rankings

1. Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

2. Supertramp - Crime of the Century

3. Genesis - Foxtrot

4. Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink

5. Camel - Mirage

6. Yes – Close to the Edge

7. Renaissance - Ashes Are Burning

8. King Crimson - Red

9. Gentle Giant - Octopus

10. Dream Theater - Metropolis, Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory

11. Genesis - Selling England by the Pound

12. Rush - 2112

13. Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick

14. ELP - Brain Salad Surgery

15. U.K. - U.K

16. Rush - Moving Pictures

17. King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King

18. Kansas - Leftoverture

19. The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium

20. Premiata Forneria Marconi - Per Un Amico

21. King Crimson - Larks’ Tongue in Aspic

22. Pink Floyd - Animals

23. TOOL - Lateralus

24. Frank Zappa - One Size Fits All

25. Yes - Fragile

26. Rush - Hemispheres

27. Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

28. Magma - Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh

29. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

30. Can - Future Days

31. Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

32. Van Der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts

33. Opeth - Blackwater Park

34. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here