Happy 56th Anniversary to In The Wake of Poseidon
This is personally one of my favorite albums by the band and of all time. May say it’s just a cheap knockoff of court but I see it as something different. I think it offers a great moment in the bands history where they took the old ways of court and the new experimentation that would lead to Lizard, and created something that merged the two, while paving a path for the future.
Peace a Beginning is a nice and cool intro to the album, it’s a soft and almost ethereal poem that gets more human “sounding” closer to the end, which then just with a crash as the best track comes into frame. Overall, the peace suite really feels like it ties the tonal whiplash from each track together, so that it feels like a whole picture of a world falling part due to the many failings presented in the songs.
This can be seen in the artificial, sterile and sinful world and lives we live in with Pictures of a City depicting the blinding and nauseating existence of city life and the vices it offers that disconnects us from the real and natural world with meaning. This is clearly seen in the heavy yet polished sound the song had which opposes Schizoids man chaotic nature. I really like Fripp putting his guitar multiple parts on top of each other as well as making A Man a City a more complete yet more engaging song with its many fast and slow moments. I also think his guitar playing just before the last verse foreshadows the future to his more atmospheric playing later on.
Cadence and Cascade deals with the lack of meaning and intimacy in sex, which I also saw as someone retreating into their dreams after being dissatisfied with their real life and the real world as it falls apart. I remember T.S Elliot said something in the Waste Land to the effect of “the nymphs (of intimate and meaningful relationships) have departed, now replaced by sex workers who serve to fulfill a fleeting desire that has no value or greater meaning. Despite such a message, it sounds much more wispy, gentle, and dreamy as opposed to Winds solemn and reflective sound and depressively self-aware meaning. The piano, flute, and Celeste playing on this makes the song feel more magical and gentle, with the acoustic guitar making it feel oddly cozy.
The title track depicts the subjects of this world all caught up in their own moral failings with the either being to close to their emotions and lacking logical reasoning, or to close to their thinking and lacking emotional understanding of each other. The last few minutes serve as a realization that both are needed in order to traverse and interact with this fallen world and its inhabitants, feeling like a revelation or enlightenment before finding peace in Peace: a theme. I like how epic and fantastical this track sounds in comparison to Epitaphs bombastic durge sound. The mellotron on the title track is just as if not more powerful than on Epitaphs, but the guitar, bass and vocals serving as gentle yet powerful additions of character while the drums are heavy and discordant that underscores that ambiance in the best way possible. The instrumental break is meditative and calm before the mellotrons and drums swell to the final verse and outro where we get this sound of revelation that resolves the song with a shifting climax.
Cat food is a track I point to that showcases the early lizard sound coming into frame. It’s a humorous take on how food is becoming artificial and losing meaning and connection with the real, natural world. I love Lakes humorous tone on this track as it also foreshadows songs like the sheriff, Benny the bouncer, and other songs from ELP. The acoustic and electric guitars, the bass, discordant piano all complement the song well with the I believe guitar sound that sounds like a blaring horn and Greg’s laugh setting up a song with amusing character that later develops into ambience that makes me think of Riders on the Storm for some reason.
The Devil’s Triangle is an epic arrangement that perverts and re-imagines Mars: Bringer of War without making it sound redundant while also making it sound heavier and more chaotic in the best way. I love how this song pushes the mellotron to its absolute limit with every part of this song getting more and more chaotic as it goes. This feels like a precursor to the last skirmish section of the battle of glass tears. To me, the Devils Triangle is the world of the album building and building up to a schism of devastating proportions only for this world to destroy itself in a tense back and forth between emotions and thinking, between the natural and artificial world and traits of humanity, until in the breakdown of cataclysmic destruction, create something new and find peace at the very end, bringing together the masculine and demon energies and all other opposing yet complementary forces of life.
This leads into Peace an end that sends off the album in a satisfying conclusion. I love how it combines both aspects of the previous peace tracks, that also gets more and more ethereal as it ends which harkens back to the way in which Peace a beginning, well begins.
There’s also Groon which I take as the post credit scene of the album that also serves as the early early roots for Lizards emergence and its tonal shifts that was coming into being as seen on side two of the album.
The cover is also very cool, as it not only serves as depictions for each character in the title track, but also shows the many traits and personalities that clash to create something new. It helps that the painting that the album suits for its cover is called “The 12 faces of humanity.” This is just my intellectual interpretation of the album and its tracks for its 56th Anniversary. I mainly pulled from my thoughts on the album as well as Peter Sinfeilds own interpretation from his cite songsouponsea, tho you’ll have to use the wayback machine to look at it since it’s been taken down sometime after his death. Let me know what you think of the album and its songs, I’d love to hear and engage with your thoughts. That is all.