EXOTIC BIRDS AND FRUIT
Procol Harum
•Crossover Prog
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3.44
| 155 ratings | 11 reviews | 16% 5 stars
Good, but non-essential |
Studio Album, released in 1974 Songs / Tracks Listing 1. Nothing But the Truth (3:13) - Gary Brooker / lead vocals, piano
Artwork: Jakob Bogdani (6 May 1658 - 11 November 1724) and to Quinino for the last updates Edit this entry |
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PROCOL HARUM Exotic Birds And Fruit ratings distribution
(155 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(16%)Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(40%)Good, but non-essential (38%)Collectors/fans only (6%)Poor. Only for completionists (0%)
PROCOL HARUM Exotic Birds And Fruit reviews
Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings
Collaborators/Experts Reviews
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog Folk
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
One of the reasons for my unqualified seal of approval is the absolutely gorgeous As Strong As Samson, which is a heart-breaking, nihilistic song of beauty. "Psychiatrists and lawyers/destroying mankind/driving them crazy and robbing them blind" sings Gary Brooker as Chris Copping turns in his best ever organ solo ... another tearing, searing, yet emphatically melancholic piece. B.J. Wilson's drumming is top-notch on this one, rolling us all the way to heaven and back again. Every little nuance of this perfect, perfect song melts me. When Gary sings "there ain't no use" as the tune fades out, you know he's right.
Aside from that brilliant track, Exotic Birds is an engaging, occassionally challenging hotch- potch of quality tunes. The band rocks out on Nothing But The Truth, Monsieur R. Monde (a reworked blues tinged-treatement of a track was first pencilled-in for the Shine On Brightly album) and Butterfly Boys (which starts off quite weak but is redeemed by some scorching work from Mic Grabham). It does a bit of a polka on the Balkan-influenced Beyond The Pale, it broods its way through the slow-burning epic The Idol, it pulls its hair out on the truly avant-garde The Thin End Of The Wedge (featuring all kinds of grim, spoken-word antics from Brooker), it winks and laughs through the playful Fresh Fruit. As for the stately New Lamps For Old (yes, stately in a Homburg/A Whiter Shade Of Pale kind of way) it is vintage PH. My version of album has the muscular B-side Drunk Again thrown in as bonus track and this "party" song doesn't detract from the quality of this fine album.
Even if I do feel that the one majestic song dwarfs the rest of the album, and I wouldn't say that this album catches Procol at its proggiest, this is still a very, very strong effort. ... 74% on the MPV scale
PROG REVIEWER
PROG REVIEWER
Especially during the first part of the album which features fine pieces of music. The Procol ingredients are well present: nice melodies, performing and so recognizable vocals. The whole peaking during the very good "The Idol".
But from the rocking "Monsieur R. Monde", it collapses quite a bit. This aspect has never been my favourite of the band; and there are no changes with "Exotic Birds & Fruit" ("Butterfly Boys" just confirms this feeling). This one ending a poor trilogy of songs of which "Fresh Fruit" is probably the worst of all.
The good news is that the last and very much beatles-esque "New Lamps for Old" is a superb and very melancholic song. My favourite on this album. Great organ, and a very convincing Brooker on the vocals. Somewhat, it reminds me of the great, great "Writer".
During six songs, this album could almost rival with their best efforts. Still, it is quite decent work which should please the lovers of a sweet and melodic rock. Few highlights but a strong album overall.
Three stars.
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
As it turns out the symphonic/progressive elements are still there on "Exotic Birds and Fruit" albeit in much smaller doses and on this album it�s the organ arrangements that makes the music symphonic in parts and not an orchestra (there is a string arrangement in "Nothing But the Truth" but that�s the only place). The music style on "Exotic Birds and Fruit" is unmistakbaly the sound of Procol Harum and tracks like "Nothing But the Truth", "As Strong as Samson", "The Idol", the eerie sounding "The Thin End of the Wedge" and the beautiful closer "New Lamps for Old" are all strong Procol Harum compositions. On the other hand there are tracks like "Fresh Fruit" and "Butterfly Boys" which are less remarkable. Even though the band would have you believe that this is a stripped down back to basics effort (that�s basically what it says in the liner notes) Procol Harum�s music on "Exotic Birds and Fruit" is anything but stripped down. With Gary Brooker�s omnipresent piano playing and Chris Copping�s organ high in the mix this is another detailed and layered album by the band. Gary Brooker�s distinct sounding and strong voice and his melodic vocal lines are as always the center of the group�s music.
"Exotic Birds and Fruit" is a well produced album, featuring high level musicianship, a warm and pleasant sound production and for the most part intriguing songwriting, and fans of the band should of course own this album. For more casual listeners I would recommend listening to either "Shine on Brightly (1968)" or "Grand Hotel (1973)" before this one, but it is still a good quality release deserving a 3.5 star (70%) rating.
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog-Folk Team
The only two bona fide highlights occur back to back, first the re-application of Gypsy influences on the captivating "Beyond the Pale", and then the powerful "As Strong as Samson", which would have fit well on the first and best Procol effort. Copping's organ and BJ Cole's pedal steel guitar accentuate the sumptuous melody. Elsewhere, a series of inferior rehashes of earlier work in the form of "The Idol", "Monsieur R Monde", and "Butterfly Boys" disgrace the grooves. Even "Thin Edge of the Wedge", arguably the most progressive song here, degenerates into a lifeless recitation in the chorus. "Fresh Fruit" reminds us of earlier novelty work like "Good Captain Clack", a style in which Procol Harum excels better than most, but it is not destined for a lot of revolutions.
This album is stone cold for most of its duration, beyond burned out, and was their first US release not to chart; even if the successor stirred up fleeting interest, the Procol Harum saga was over by now. Exotic maybe, but hardly fresh.
PROG REVIEWER
This experience kicks off with the opening "Nothing but the Truth," which is built around a MARVELOUS set of piano riffs and has, thanks to healthy amounts of both strings and guitar, quite a nice texture, one that definitely reminds you you're listening to Procol Harum and yet doesn't sound at all like a retread of previous ideas. It also helps that there are a few VERY unpredictable melody twists in the middle, and the end result is a three-minute pop song with more ideas than most bands could hope to come with for thirty. Similarly, the following "Beyond the Pale" has its own fascinating keyboard theme, with another great melody acting as counterpoint and vaguely adding to the tension near the end, until it too crashes down at about the three-minute mark and leaves me feeling much more satiated than the mere running time might suggest it could.
After the "lightweight" opening duo, the album takes a slight turn for the more serious, but that's definitely not a complaint. "As Strong as Samson" ultimately turns out as the big highlight of the album, as it manages to take a perfectly lovely, somewhat anthemic verse melody and then outdo itself by throwing in one of the best melody twists I've EVER heard. No, really, I'm serious here - the melody in the "ain't no use in preachers preaching when they don't know what they're teaching" part is one of the most perfect, shattering, totally cathartic hooks I've heard in my life, and that it gets repeated in different variations during the coda only makes me that much happier. As for its followup, "The Idol," it might not be able to quite live up to Samson, but it's still an absolutely wonderful, gorgeous anthem about false Gods being exposed for the frauds they are (at least, that's what I'm guessing its about), not to mention that the guitar solo in the extended ending is absolutely superb.
None of the other compositions are quite as unbeliveably brilliant as the opening quartet, but most of them have their good sides nonetheless. I could live without "The Thin End of the Wedge," which tries to hard to be "menacing" without remembering to be "entertaining," but everything else is quite satisfactory. My favorites are the two straightup rock songs, both of which amply show that much of Procol's greatness in fusing rock and classical stems from the fact that they really knew how to do "normal" rock. "Monsieur R. Monde" actually comes from the debut album sessions (it was a bonus track on Whiter Shade), and while I wasn't particularly wowed there, this version gives Grabham plenty of opportunities to get his ya-ya's out, while Brooker reminds us that piano can rock just as much as guitar if it really wants to. Better still, though, is the ending "Drunk Again" (not on the original album, but a B-side tacked onto the CD reissue), with a simple-but-GREAT crunchy riff that provides an ample foundation on which, just as on "Monde," both keyboards and guitars are given the opportunity to rock and roll and boogie along like nobody's business.
The other three tracks aren't particularly noteworthy, but definitely not bad either. "Fresh Fruit" is the sort of piece you'll like if you liked "Mabel" on the debut, "Butterfly Boys" is another piano-driven pop-rocker along the lines of "Nothing but the Truth" (not as hook- filled, but with a nice enough chorus), and "New Lamps for Old" is a bit anthemic along the lines of "Samson" and "Idol" but not quite as stunning (yet with its own charms, such as the way Brooker sings the chorus, or the little rising line he sings at the ending of some verses). Regardless, though, despite the fact that the album ends weaker than it began, I don't want to hold it against the album so much as to reduce it below 4 stars. It may not sound like the unique Procol Harum we've grown to know and love, what with all these pop and r&r pieces, but it does show that Brooker, even as he might have slightly begun to slip as a creative genius, still had enough gas left in him to produce a great album that stands up to most anything in their catalogue. And hey, I'd like to give kudos to the AMG on this one - I may not agree with giving this album the highest ranking of any PH album, as they did, but I can definitely see where they're coming from, and it's not very often that I find myself in any sort of philosophical agreement with the All-Music Guide.
Latest members reviews
"Ain't no use in preacher's preaching when they don't know what their teaching. The weakest man, be strong as Sampson, when you're being held to ransom." Strong as Sampson should have been the Procol Harum song that knocked A Whiter Shade of Pale out of the British public's mind. At least f ... (read more)
Report this review (#1579668) | Posted by SteveG | Friday, June 17, 2016 | Review Permanlink
Procol Harum is one of my favorite bands and their first three albums should be part of every serious prog-rock collection. However, by the 1970s their albums became a rather or hit miss affair. Most of them are good, some of them great such as 'Broken Barricades', 'Grand Hotel' and of cours ... (read more)
Report this review (#1154416) | Posted by Prog 74 | Thursday, March 27, 2014 | Review Permanlink
"Exotic Birds and Fruit" is another strong Procol Harum record which I like. It isn't exactly as good as "Grand Hotel" but sure in the same level with "A Salty Dog". 1974 came this seventh real album by Procol Harum and I think it is a well done work which I recommend people to hear some songs ... (read more)
Report this review (#1090922) | Posted by Dr�mmarenAdrian | Monday, December 16, 2013 | Review Permanlink
I believe this could be Procol Harum's most underrated album. And this coming from a big fan of Robin Trower. Granted, it being the first complete album I heard by them may have something to do with it, but I love this album. "As Strong As Samson" is brilliant, lyrically, musically, and espec ... (read more)
Report this review (#35344) | Posted by | Sunday, June 5, 2005 | Review Permanlink
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