Review:

on 2011-03-09 CharlesMartel Said:

Ten Years After will always, for me, be associated with Alvin Lee. I always regarded the band as being his vehicle and the showcase for his at times incredible talent. The problem I have with Ten Years After is Lee's tag as the fastest guitarist in the world which tended to overshadow everything he did and loomed, like a shadow over everything that he did. True, he always denied the tag he had gained, but every time I listened to anything Ten Years After put out, I always seemed to be waiting for that blisteringly quick guitar solo somewhere in the album. Too often, on the studio albums, it never came. It is perhaps therefore hardly any wonder that I skipped around the band when I was a teenager, shortly after the height of the popularity, and then lost sight of them as punk and post-punk washed me away on a completely different musical tide.

It is perhaps odd then that, when I finally did get round to buying a Ten Years After album, years after I had first flirted with them and their music, it should be this one that I ended up with. You know, someone could write a very interesting thesis about the psychology behind album-buying. If anything, Ten Years After had begun to run out of steam by the time this album was released. It was more restrained than previous albums, some would say more mature. But charges that it was more commercial remained somewhat wide of the mark. Alvin Lee it seemed had decided to take more a back seat with this one, and it shows in the way the tracks never really seem to take off. Perhaps one reason is that there is a much greater use of acoustic guitars than on previous albums.

"A Space In Time" is a good enough album - but it is no more than a good album. It has one very good song - "I'd Love To Change The World" - a sort of "where did the sixties go wrong" sort of track which delivers just the right amount of idealism and cynicism at the same time. But it is not anything which really shows off the abilities of the individuals which make up the band. The album as a whole is able to deliver a sound mix of acoustic and electric guitar lines which chug along nicely without ever setting anything alight. Perhaps it really did need one of Lee's blisteringly fast guitar solos to bring it to life.

The problem with this album, coming back to it after so many years, is not the absence of rip-roaring guitar solos, but the over reliance on tracks which are little more than filler. "Baby Won't You Let Me Rock 'n' Roll You" is just a traditional rocker which has nothing really to offer. I cannot understand why the band insisted on putting stuff like this in. Hell, it sounds so different to the rest of the material that it even has a different feel to the sound. And then, just when you have recovered from that the band puts in "Uncle Jam". A jazz sounding instrumental. You can just hear the band talking: "Hey guys, the album's only 38 minutes long. Can we add something to pad out the gap on the second side? I know, let's sit down and jam for a while and then we can use that." It really did seem that here was a band who was running out of ideas and floundering around trying to find a direction which would enable them to move forward. This album is, in effect, a transitional album which transitions to nowhere in particular.

One good track and too much filler.
Rating: 5/10