Traffic – Smiling Phases (1991)
Artist: Traffic
Album: Smiling Phases
Genre: Eclectic Prog
Label: Island Records
Year Of Release: 1991
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
CD 1:
01. Paper Sun
02. Hole in my Shoe
03. Smiling Phases
04. Heaven Is In Your Mind
05. Coloured Rain
06. No Face, No Name, No Number
07. Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush
08. Dear Mr. Fantasy
09. You Can All Join In
10. Feelin’ Alright
11. Pearly Queen
12. (Roamin’ Thru the Gloamin’ with) 40,000 Headmen
13. Vagabond Virgin
14. Shanghai Noodle Factory
15. Withering Tree
16. Medicated Goo
CD 2:
01. Glad
02. Freedom Rider
03. Empty Pages
04. John Barleycorn
05. Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys
06. Light Up or Leave Me Alone
07. Rock and Roll Stew
08. Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory
09. Walking in the Wind
10. When the Eagle Flies
Personnel:
– Steve Winwood / keyboards, guitar, vocals
– Jim Capaldi / drums
– Dave Mason / guitar, vocals
– Chris Wood / woodwinds
During their tumultuous existence between 1967 and 1974, Traffic had two distinct phases separated by a year (January 1969 to February 1970) during which the band was temporarily dissolved. In its first phase, Traffic was heavily influenced by the pop psychedelia of its time, but were also developing a distinctive blues-rock jam style. When Steve Winwood reconvened the group in 1970 without Dave Mason, he was ready to take the spotlight more forcefully, and Traffic evolved into a band that played long, largely instrumental songs. In constructing a two-CD retrospective of Traffic, compiler Kevin Patrick has taken the obvious step of devoting disc one to the early phase of Traffic and disc two to the later one. He faces different challenges in selecting tracks for each disc. The first CD is necessarily diverse; the early singles must be included, and so must some of Dave Mason’s material, though his songs tend to sound more like solo tracks. The challenge for disc two is simply that the songs from 1970-1974 tend to be so long, and it’s difficult to decide which ones to include. Patrick has met both of these challenges admirably. Though both discs are a bit short by CD standards, running a little over an hour each, there are few significant tracks that are missing. On disc two, Patrick has striven to be fair to the later Traffic albums, even though they are not as good as their predecessors from this phase, but he strikes a reasonable balance. Until 1991, Traffic had had no more than a few single-disc compilations, the most readily available being The Best of Traffic, which contained nothing from the group’s later period. So, Smiling Phases was a welcome addition to the catalog, with solid selection and sequencing.
Review by William Ruhlmann
