TOPPER

"At Last" 1977 (Scot t-9548)
This one may annoy a lot of people, but I love it. It’s synth-heavy 70s prog with a mild heavy tone, much more about hooks, melodies and creative use of Moog than about virtuoso instrumentation. The synths are inventive and intense, and the instrumental bits are carefully composed. There’s nothing offhand or boring about this album. The vocalist falls somewhere between 60s hard rock and 60s soul, and somehow fits this mix perfectly. All of these elements could add up to real dreck, especially on the song with a strong disco/funk feel, but somehow it works. The last few songs flirt with heavy metal-style devilishness, including electronically altered vocals, but there’s a surprising mildness to this music. The guitars are relatively sparse and tastefully low-key (no distortion on the rhythm guitars.) One song rips off “Stairway To Heaven,” something Led Zeppelin deserves for all of their own thievery, and adds mellotron to wonderful dramatic effect. This really doesn’t sound like anything else I know, and maybe there aren’t a whole lot of people out there who will react to it as positively as I do, but I sure can’t stop playing it. [AM]