Caravan

"Progressive? Endless virtuosic nightmares stretching on for tens of minutes, ridiculous costumes, melodic contortions that go nowhere, sterile and tedious pretentiousness, when not downright irritating". If this is your idea of the genre, chances are you've never turned your gaze to that dazzling kaleidoscope of ideas that was the Canterbury scene. Irony, imagination and spontaneity: these were the watchwords of this submerged branch of English rock, forever balanced between jazz, rock, pop and psychedelia.

Caravan, with their sunny, fairy-tale style and frequent line-up changes, can be picked out (alongside the more experimental Soft Machine and Henry Cow) as the most representative band of the dense web of artists and groups that populated the small English town in the early '70s. "In The Land Of Grey And Pink" is their third album, the one in which the magical alchemy of surreal atmospheres, lightness and jazz flavour reaches its stylistic and expressive peak.

Behind this colourful, flower-strewn creature stand first and foremost the group's four members: the underrated Richard Sinclair, singer and bassist with a rare gift for melody; his cousin David Sinclair, blues-rooted keyboardist and the group's leader; and guitarist Pye Hastings, left somewhat on the sidelines save for the odd vocal appearance. Richard Coughlan, the group's drummer, deserves a chapter of his own: one of the few in jazz-rock to build a synthesis of rock rhythms with a jazz touch, rather than the other way round. There's also the support of Jimmy Hastings on horns, especially sax and flute, and of producer David Hitchcock.

It's impossible not to mention the cover art, one of the most celebrated among fans and already emblematic, with its grey-and-pink-tinted gnome-village landscape, of the spirit running through the whole album.

That spirit is perfectly embodied by the opening track, "Golf Girl": a brief, understated solo on what's probably a trumpet, and suddenly we're dropped onto a golf course having a cup of tea alongside a "golf girl dressed in Pvc", with Pye Hastings blithely strumming his guitar under a tree and Richard Sinclair's velvety voice giving way to a distinctly bluesy hammond-and-mellotron bridge, followed by the return of the verse, this time enriched by David Sinclair's and Pye Hastings' keyboard and flute flourishes. What opens the record is a small pop embroidery with an uncanny knack for lodging itself in your head for hours, if not days.

A couple of lovely folk verses open the second track, "Winter Wine", which unexpectedly turns into a fantasy adventure of dragons and wizards, ambushed by sharp organ chords that make the song the closest thing on the whole album to "progressive" in the conventional sense. The slow but inexorable crescendo is only briefly suspended by a more relaxed section, with drumming that's never sounded so jazzy, charged with a sense of anticipation that spills over into David Sinclair's masterful fuzz-organ solo, propelled by driving drums and the pulse of Richard Sinclair's bass, a true second voice. The return of the vocal line culminates in the radiant "we'll be together all the time" and leads into the close of a track remarkable for its ability to blend lightness and tension without ever letting them collide.

The following "Love To Love You (And Tonight Pigs Will Fly)", sung by Pye Hastings, is a cheerful pop song built on a simple C-F-G major accompaniment. The guitar phrasing that breaks up the verses is notable, and the closing flute solo finds Jimmy Hastings in fine form, but overall the track remains rather slight, if catchy.

The title track "In The Land Of Grey And Pink" is perhaps the song that best captures the group's joyful, playful spirit, with delirious lyrics full of wordplay and English humour ("In the land of grey and pink / where only boy scouts stop to think") and a bare-bones accompaniment: bass, major-key guitar and drums practically in unison. Once again it's Richard Sinclair's warm voice guiding us through the absurdities and beauties of the cover's landscape, and when the luminous piano interlude materialises out of nowhere like a fine drizzle, you half expect a little grey-and-pink rainbow to appear somewhere.

The stylistic, expressive and creative peak, however, is the monumental "Nine Feet Underground", a largely instrumental suite that filled the entire second side of the vinyl edition. The title comes from the semi-basement where David Sinclair lived when he wrote the three songs that were later merged into the eight parts making up the piece. Despite its fragmented origins, the music flows uninterrupted for 23 minutes, and its undeniable longueurs are entirely overshadowed by the exceptional rhythmic and melodic quality of the whole. Essentially, the suite consists of two sung sections, linked by a series of long instrumental digressions rich in the dizzying piano-organ passages and lightning-fast riffs that define the style of the group and of kindred bands like Camel or the future Hatfield & The North. The composition is dominated by David Sinclair, who tastefully explores every register of his organ, from the cleanest to the roughest. Plenty of room is given to the bass's acrobatics and the drums' composure, never overplayed and never lacking, but always fuelling the group's jazz-rock engine at full throttle. Both sung sections and the passages immediately following them are outstanding: the first an engrossing crescendo of variations and embellishments on a single theme, the second governed by an overwhelming guitar phrase that bursts in out of nowhere and, bolstered by the whole band, drives the track toward its energetic finale.

The CD reissue put out by Decca in 2001 includes five bonus tracks, of which "You Don't Know Its Name Alias The Word" is the only one that amounts to more than a footnote. The remaining four are rough versions of the album's songs, of only limited interest.

After "In The Land Of Grey And Pink", David Sinclair left the group to form Matching Mole with Robert Wyatt, and shortly afterward his cousin left too, first for Hatfield & The North and then for Camel. The band carried on regardless with two engaging albums, though by then far removed from that lively, carefree way of making music as if it were the easiest thing in the world, playing, joking and casting spells with the utmost naturalness.

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27/10/2006