Caravan’s complete of simply two weeks on the official UK album chart totally belies their historic significance to the British rock panorama, and the progressive “Canterbury scene” specifically. Maybe the best-known LP by the English outfit and seen by many as their most interesting hour, Gray and Pink arrived some three years after Caravan got here into being. They had been shaped by musicians who’d all performed, at various instances, with Wilde Flowers, additionally the premise of Comfortable Machine. Pye Hastings set off on this new journey with Dave Sinclair, his cousin Richard and Richard Coughlan.
An early US take care of the Verve label led to their first, self-titled album, however proved one thing of a false daybreak. As they constructed their stay popularity, Caravan received a second take care of Decca, who launched 1970’s If I Might Do It All Over Once more, I’d Do It All Over You. Then got here the periods at each Decca and the brand new AIR Studios that produced In The Land Of Gray And Pink, which proved to be the final album by this line-up till 1982.
Hastings was much less distinguished on this launch than its predecessors, with Richard Sinclair taking the vast majority of the lead vocals, together with on his opening composition “Golf Girl.” Pye’s lighter vocal contact was the lead for the whimsical “Love To Love You (And Tonight Pigs Will Fly).” Nevertheless it was the episodic, 22-minute “Nine Feet Underground,” which shaped the entire of aspect two of the LP, which got here to signify the peak of Caravan’s free-spirited sonic experimentation and their extremely particular person marriage of folks, jazz and rock parts.
The album usually exuded a poppy really feel, with a piccolo solo on “Golf Girl” by Pye’s brother, fellow Canterbury alumnus Jimmy Hastings. The monitor was on the B-side of the one launched in February 1971, led by “Love To Love You.” The LP adopted in April on Decca’s Deram label, with a gatefold sleeve that includes Anne-Marie Anderson’s memorably Tolkienesque illustration. Rolling Stone mentioned that the file evoked “a Middle Earth sunset, with the music wavering between medieval folk melodies and jazz-savvy musos.”
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The album missed the UK chart, however went on to turn out to be Caravan’s bestselling launch, and has all the time remained in catalog. In 2011, the file’s 40th anniversary was marked with a deluxe reissue. The unique multi-track session and album masters had been revisited by modern-day progressive music figurehead Steven Wilson, who accomplished new stereo and 5.1 encompass sound mixes.
After a few years of discuss a solo challenge for Hastings, he began a profitable PledgeMusic marketing campaign to fund his first album in his personal identify, From The Half Home, launched in the summertime of 2017.
Purchase or stream Within the Land of Gray and Pink.
