New Music Review : Caravan - It's None Of Your Business : CD Album Music Review : Dangerdog Music Reviews : Craig Hartranft

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Caravan: It's None Of Your Business

Melodic Progressive Rock

4.5/5.0

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Madfish Records
Words: Craig Hartranft
Added: 16.10.2021 | Released: 08.10.2021

Considering a new Caravan album may require a little history for some readers, especially if you're under the age of thirty. The English rock band has its origins in the 1960's and what was came to be known as the "Canterbury Scene" in Kent. Wherein bands evolved through the blending of common and current musical genres like folk, jazz, classical music, and psychedelic rock, among others. Caravan was one of the seminal bands of the era, which also included Soft Machine, Gong, The Wilde Flowers, and perhaps Camel. The band has had several starts and stops over its 53 year history, all the time being led by original founder, guitarist, and songwriter Pye Hastings. It's None Of Your Business is Caravan's latest and fifteenth studio album.

Caravan

While some may consider the foregoing a preface to merely hearing Caravan and It's None Of Your Business as a throwback in time, they would be wrong. Perhaps, yes, some of the psychedelic and experimental improvisation is minimized. But this album is a delightful example of the melodic progressive rock which has lead to and informed past and present acts like The Flower Kings or Transatlantic, among many others. Caravan compositions are long on song melody, vocal harmony, spry guitar work, Hammond accents, cogent and cocky lyrics, twists in arrangements, tactical and catchy refrains, and some fiery guitar work. All these things saturate the music and radiate from the music of It's None Of Your Business.

Exploring some details, with Down From London, Wishing You Were Here, or Ready Or Not, you'll find ambitious rock numbers with stronger riffs, bundled with synths, and accented with some acoustic guitar. Down From London features some of that pure English humor in the lyrics (emphasis mine):

Looked up and down and said, he could be a toff
He could be far much worse, likely as not
Dressed like a country squire, all tweedy and brogued
They said they'd never seen the like, the like before

But after these tunes, Caravan turns more mellow for the majority of the album with songs like If I Was To Fly and Every Precious Little Thing turning upon acoustic guitar and vocal, often in some symphonic embellishment. With Every Precious Thing, Spare A Thought features some light flute. Whereas There Is You and Luna's Tuna feature more keyboards, piano, and Hammond in a vocal song for the former and instrumental for the latter. The "prog" tour-de-force is the 10 minute title cut and opus offering variations on traditional melodic progressive rock with some jazz-like and symphonic nuances.

All said, Caravan's It's None Of Your Business is a delightful and entertaining of melodic progressive rock being vintage, timeless, and current for a new century. Easily recommended.

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