{"id":44964,"date":"2017-06-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/in-the-wake-of-poseidon-2\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:20:10","slug":"in-the-wake-of-poseidon-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/in-the-wake-of-poseidon-2\/","title":{"rendered":"In The Wake Of Poseidon"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a long time, the Vault\u2019s review of this album<\/a> has listed it as a forgotten classic. I\u2019m here to say that\u2019s not exactly true. <\/p>\n

Following In The Court Of The Crimson King <\/i>would have been a tough task for anybody; it sounded like the work of a mature band making a grand statement, not a debut. It proved to be too much for three band members, who left before recording started on this disc; one of them, Greg Lake, went on to help form Emerson, Lake & Palmer the same year (who also released a stellar debut album. Must be something in the water in Bournemouth) halfway through recording the vocals for this album. Undaunted, Robert Fripp recruited some more members and pressed on with recording the sophomore disc.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that involved pretty much copying the first side of Crimson King <\/i>for this album\u2019s first side, and then filling the second side with a bonkers sorta-pop song and a long, meandering instrumental. It\u2019s no doubt the same band, unafraid to use cacophony for tension and release, full of doom-laden musical statements with fantasy lyrics, simultaneously tasteful and pretentious. But Poseidon <\/i>is mostly a case of diminishing musical returns, an album that the faithful no doubt enjoy but those new to Crimson will likely not be terribly interested in (Fripp also feels this way, I suppose, which is why he rarely includes any of its songs on Crimson compilations.<\/p>\n

Crimson is at its best when it has something to say, which is why the first album of every iteration is always the best (Court, Discipline, Larks\u2019 Tongues In Aspic, THRAK<\/i>) and the ones that follow tend to be a little imitative (with Red <\/i>a lone exception). So where Court <\/i>had a screeching, abrasive mechanical rocker in \u201c21st<\/sup> Century Schizoid Man,\u201d here we have the similar but less necessary \u201cPictures Of A City.\u201d And where Court <\/i>then had a gentle ballad in \u201cI Talk To The Wind,\u201d here we have \u201cCadence And Cascade,\u201d which is equally full of those Tolkien-like lyrics that British bands so favored in the late \u201860s that sound so twee now. <\/p>\n

And where Court <\/i>had the truly epic and superb \u201cEpitaph,\u201d this one has \u201cIn The Wake Of Poseidon,\u201d yet another gloomy Mellotron-heavy eight-minute epic with similar environmental\/anti-war themes; the moment where Lake holds the final note is chilling, as are the wordless backup vocals that fade out the piece. It\u2019s the best moment here.<\/p>\n

The second side starts with \u201cCat Food,\u201d which was released in a single version as well, and which is one of the more bizarre pieces in what I\u2019m guessing was Fripp\u2019s Captain Beefheart phase or something. I think Peter Sinfield\u2019s lyrics basically center around an observation of people shopping at a grocery store and one woman in particular whose food is so bad it tastes like cat food. It\u2019s about the only time Crimson had a sense of humor in these early days and it\u2019s very out of place among the rest of the disc. The final 12 minutes are taken with up with a repetitive instrumental, \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Triangle,\u201d which introduces an occasional Crimson conceit of starting softly with a song and slowly turning up the volume to a noisy, abrupt climax (witness also \u201cThe Talking Drum\u201d and \u201cDangerous Curves\u201d). Yet this one has no real hook, just a lot of Mellotron noodling and repetitive passages, while the first two minutes are so quiet and pointless they may as well have been cut from the album.<\/p>\n

There will be some areas here for the Crimson faithful and anybody interested in digging into the albums may find something here, but this is probably one of the last ones that needs to be discovered. Not a bad album at all, but not quite a forgotten gem (sorry, Chris).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":27474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5758],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-44964","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-king-crimson","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44964"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}