Manfred Mann

Vocalist Chris Thompson's last album with Manfred Mann's Earth Band is dressed up in Mann's beautiful keyboards. Angel Station has some key moments – "You Angel You," a Bob Dylan tune that sounds nothing like Dylan, and not the way their Top Ten version of "Quinn the Eskimo"/"The Mighty Quinn" was reinvented. "You Angel You" has a strong hook with topnotch Anthony Moore production work, and it melts into the title track of Harriet Schock's landmark Hollywood Town album, the source of Helen Reddy's "Ain't No Way to Treat a Lady." The Manfred Mann version is interesting, and explores the possibilities of the composition, though Schock's version is perfect country-pop and hard to top. It is nice to see a rock band with such good taste…

This is quite a challenging album to review. Quite how challenging it must have been to produce doesn’t bear thinking about. In fact, we are lucky enough to have an insight into that process. Manfred’s own, searingly honest, liner notes to accompany this album provide a glimpse of the frustrations, ambitions and doubts of perfectionist recording artist…

To put it bluntly, the last great album by the Earth Band for their amazing progressive rock turned into a commercial regression. Even though "Watch" is riding on the heels of their most commercial songs ever ("Blinded By The Light"), and even produced a smash single of its own ("Davy's On The Road Again"), it is still a certified masterpiece of progressive rock. That fact is only back up by the album's swirling mellotron solos and catchy acoustic guitars…

Another piece of topical hard rock from Manfred Mann's Earth Band and, as before, listenable even to those without a serious bone in their bodies, by virtue of the playing. Moving between hard rock and British blues influences (with a special debt to Cream on the opening cut, "Give Me the Good Earth") and progressive rock, the quartet cuts a mean swathe across the sonic landscape, between Mick Rogers' soaring guitar solos and Manfred Mann's inimitable synthesizer work…

Opening with Mike Hugg's title track, which builds on Mick Rogers' intense riffing and the killer vocals of Vicki Brown, Judith Powell, Liza Strike, and Ruby James, Messin' is pretty intense and involving from its very first bars. It's also damned topical and serious, for all of the free-wheeling rock & roll spirits and the progressive rock complexities that go into the playing. And the result is a spellbinding whole, featuring some astonishing keyboard flourishes by Manfred Mann himself (who ventures into Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson territory on "Buddah," even as the rest of the band seems to be emulating Deep Purple) and killer guitar from Mick Rogers, while Colin Pattenden and Chris Slade lay down the rhythm section like a pair of articulate pile-drivers…

1986's Criminal Tango is one of the more intriguing titles in Manfred Mann's Earth Band extensive catalog. Not only is it filled with some of the more memorable cover versions in their four decade career, Criminal Tango is truly a rocking session that keeps their musical tradition alive…

Manfred Mann's Earth Band had no shortage of albums to their credit across the 1970s and 1980s, though how many of them made it into the hands of American listeners is questionable – you'd have thought a live album would have been forthcoming sometime fairly soon after they scored their chart-topping hit with "Blinded by the Light," but that wasn't the case…