The snow is melting like the wicked witch of whereverthefuck and with this the week starts a new. A weekend of nothing aside of the usual is behind me: drink, slouching, being kept away by roudy Germans leaving the night club opposite, pasta and this...
To be honest my motto of 'Always judge a record by it's cover' has a pretty low success rate, I have no idea where it came from but it's my motto so get your own. Take Baltik - Baltik for example. It looks incredible, important, like the missing link between Nordic Prog and Black Metal. It isn't.
Baltik starts with the kind of twin guitar assault that brings to mind lazy period Big Country at best. It is nothing short of disgusting. It's the theme from Top Gear but in slow motion and without the pay-off of watching Clarkson be borderline racist about motor vehicles. Sadly the pain doesn't stop there. Track two and the majority of side one is late seventies show tune ballads with the kind of soft rock accompaniment that betrays the sleeve as much as it is instantly forgettable.
So why do I own this? All I can say is that it sounded a lot better when it was played to me at a friends house. In fairness the second side is an improvement and the female lead is solid throughout but its not enough to change the fact that this is a pop/rock album that has been blown up and bloated by those crazy beat collecting guys, labeled inaccurately with the 'P' word (Prog) and had its price hiked way beyond where it should be.
Regardless of the fact that the vast majority of this record is dishwater dull I won't be getting rid of it just yet. The last track 'Long Long Weekend' is good, and for now at least enough to save the entire dire mess. And besides that, the sleeve is so convincing that I can almost pretend to myself that it really is some kind of long lost break-through Pagan Electronic Drone LP.
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