Brain Salad Surgery. What to say about this album? I'm genuinely struggling. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's 4h album (and coincidentally the follow-up to Trilogy, the only other ELP album I've listened to) is widely regarded as a true standout in the world of prog rock. In a certain sense, I would agree. The technicality and prowess demonstrated on the album is very impressive, especially for 1973. Emerson's keyboard and the synth are spectacular here, using novel timbres and displaying a lot of skill; with the way that they're able to convey a wordless story through a good chunk of the album is very impressive and probably my favorite aspect of it. The thing that I don't think I can avoid is compare it to Trilogy, which is both a good and bad thing. My main problem with Trilogy was how unfocused it was, never really having a solid identity or sound that it settled on or could come back to throughout and felt disjointed between the various styles and sounds it browsed through. BSS has a similar element of switching styles, just look at the whiplash from 'Toccata' to 'Still... You Turn Me On' to 'Benny the Bouncer'. Thankfully the problem is remedied by 2 things here: 1, the album is tighter in its track listing, with nearly half of the tracks here being Karn Evil 9 (and if you count all of it as a single song then the album only has 5 total!), and 2, Karn Evil 9 itself is much more focused in on what it is, with its own solid identity that allows itself to be experimental through the different movements but still feeling like all the pieces go together. It's a nice improvement from Trilogy, and good to see the band tighten up their compositions a little. Even after all that I'm still struggling to find a way to really wrap up this review and summarize the album as a whole, if that means anything to you. It's fairly similar to its predecessor but also fairly different. It's what you would expect of early 70's prog, but also wholly unique at the same time. It's tough deciding where on the rating scale I think this should go, but I think my recommendation of it just to hear what it's all about is enough for me to justify where I put it. I hope any of this made sense, because the album isn't making it easy.
Highlights: Toccata, Still... You Turn Me On, Karn Evil 9 (all of it).
Rating: 5/6
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