For every undiscovered rock or pop gem that springs from the late '60s and early '70s, there are dozens of albums whose hype far exceeds their musical quality. Occasionally, an album will arise from this era with its musical virtue still wholly intact, but, tragically, it is impaired by a single element that could have been easily avoided had the same consideration been given to it as to the music. The sole 1972 album from
Chirco
,
Visitation
, is one such misfortune.
was actually originally a studio project led by percussionist
Tony Chirco
and producer
Michael Cuscuna
rather than a proper band, but eventually the New York band
Sassafras
came aboard, and proved to be the project's saving grace. The musicianship in evidence on
is uniformly ambitious and complex, with bassist
Bruce Taylor
and drummer
S.H. Foote
particularly impressive. They construct a swinging rhythmic underpinning that propels the music upward and forward, a match for the subtle spirituality of the lyrics. The album contains some of the hallmarks of progressive rock, especially the highly structured, conceptual songs that wear their pretensions on their sleeves, but although the usual rock instrumentation (drums, bass, guitar, keyboards) is present,
Cuscuna
also had the vision to variously incorporate horns and percussion, and the ubiquitous presence of electronic vibes helps
create something that transcends progressive rock. The band's playing often approaches the texture and intricacy of jazz, with passages ranging from breezy to boldly powerful to grooving, and the album is equally demanding in that it does not contain proper songs; instead, it consists of two side-long suites with each part rolling directly into the next without lulls or gaps. And although some of the music overreaches or descends into hackneyed hard rock cliche, had
stopped here, the album would have been a find. Unfortunately, the album is both dated and marred by the vocals, which are firmly planted in the '70s pedestrian hard rock mold that emphasized histrionic wailing over expressiveness or genuine edge. With more idiosyncratic vocals,
might well have had the right to claim itself a lost treasure from the progressive-psych era. As it is, the album is hard even to enjoy for its good parts because they have been spoiled by the bad. ~ Stanton Swihart