Despite the album title, and also having a track called Walking Back To Waterloo, this isn’t a Napoleonic Wars concept album (which could be fun). The Gibb Brothers do what they do when they’re not doing disco, which is soaring ballads with lush orchestration and harmonies on the chorus. Which is fine, and it’s a pleasant enough listen but as is often the case with albums composed entirely of pleasantness, very little tended to stand out; it’s almost the case that if you like one track, you’ll like the others. Walking Back To Waterloo, the final track on the album, is probably the best example of such a song, with a very singable chorus.
For me the more interesting tracks are a
couple where Robin Gibb takes the lead in the vocals (usually it’s Barry, there
are a few from Maurice, sometimes they take turns within a song). On the track When
Do I, Robin goes up and down the scale, going as low as I’ve ever heard a Bee
Gee go, while The Lion In Winter is a soulful, almost gospel, number where Gibb
R really goes for it with a rough timbre that brings to mind John Lennon’s
primal scream therapy. I think that whoever did the final mix perhaps chickened
out of having too much of that sort of thing in a Bee Gees song as he is faded
out to be drowned out by the orchestral track, and to my mind they ought to
have kept him up until fade. His voice isn’t as smooth as Gibbs B and M, but
sometimes it works for the song.
This didn’t impress me as much as Odessa,
perhaps because the songs were all a little bit samey, like the Gibbs had hit
upon a formula that worked for them and decided to stick with it. And who can
blame them? It’s another one of those albums on this list where I was left
wondering “why this one and not another?” And my usual (superficial) research
didn’t turn up much either. Sometimes it’s the first album that typifies a
group’s sound, or where the classic line-up comes together, sometimes it’s what
Dimery considers to be an overlooked classic, and perhaps that’s what this is.
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