The two hundred and twenty-fourth album: #224 Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Tarkus
Oh boy - another prog rock album with one side being a single twenty minute epic that feels jazz-infused improv a few bars in. There's some more structure to Tarkus than that implies, but it still feels like it lacks the focus of the really grand epics. There's some storytelling in here, but the lyrics don't fulfill that and the music feels more like an accompaniment to the liner images. The rest of the album, like some many prog rock albums, feels like a playground, trying to seem smarter than it might well be. There are some interesting experiments with instruments, but it feels like it's been done better, with more earned confidence - I can see how this could be your thing if you're into prog rock, but it's hard to do so when you feel the genre has shot past what makes it good.