If - 3

Jazz meets rock; an honourable draw ensues

If were one of Britain’s brassdriven responses to Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears: late-60s jazzmen looking to break into the lucrative rock market. They did reasonably well in the States, where the market was at its most voracious, but never quite escaped the student circuit here. This, their third album from 1971, contains one of their bestremembered tracks in Forgotten Roads, while sax-player Dave Quincy adds insight to the sleeve notes. Fans of strange time signatures will enjoy the opening Fibonacci’s Number, an eightminute instrumental celebrating… a mathematician!

The gatefold packaging is impressive, the mini-poster charming and the sleeve art fantastic, but the music from nearly four decades’ distance is a little ‘Colosseum lite’. Maybe this was down to their lack of trumpet/ trombone alongside the saxes of Quincy and Morrissey. Better songwriting, better vocal delivery (JW Hodgkinson is competent but less than distinctive) or both could perhaps have taken them further. But probably not in Britain.

Repertoire | REPUK 1097

Reviewed by Michael Heatley
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