Label: RCA Records / BMG Heritage (US), 82876 62871 2
Style: Folk Rock, Pop Rock
Country: San Francisco, California, U.S.
Time: 42:34
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 262 Mb
Charts: US #3, AUS #62, CAN #3, NED #17, NZ #13, UK #30. CAN: Gold; US: Platinum.
The
only American rock bands that have enjoyed more than a decade of
commercial success while evolving their own artistic visions are the
Beach Boys and the Jefferson Airplane/Starship. As the Beach Boys
defined pleasure in the Sixties, the Airplane defined the
counterculture’s political and spiritual ideals and lived out the tribal
myth. Though the Airplane/Starship’s history has proven far from
idyllic, it is resilient; the creative nucleus of Paul Kantner, Grace
Slick and Marty Balin successfully refocused in the loftier concept of
the Jefferson Starship.
To analyze Starship cosmology — an oleo of
Orientalia, science fiction and psychedelic fantasy — would be beside
the point: one needn’t buy the Starship’s extraterrestrial fantasies in
order to enjoy what is often magnificent rock music.
Spitfire, the
third Starship album, mixes the oracular and the mundane with a
classical sense of balance. While the music no longer has the explosive
urgency of youth, it combines a rare stylistic breadth with awesomely
controlled power. The music that Jon Landau described in 1970 as “an
elongated folk-rock fragment” has since been carried to what is at once
its stylistic apex (it cannot become more sophisticated without
incorporating jazz) and its denouement (if it were any richer it would
begin to sound enervated).
More than the Airplane’s, the Starship’s
music builds a symphonic sound and embellishes it with spectacular
instrumentation. This approach was first fully developed on
Kantner/Slick’s impressive “Sketches of China,” from Baron Von
Tollbooth. On Spitfire, its most magnificent expression is “St.
Charles,” a transcendently erotic East/West, yin/yang vision of love.
Here, a relatively simple melodic idea is elaborated in an unusually
sophisticated (for rock) choral setting and covered by increasingly
heavy waves of chromatic guitar work. The cut slowly climaxes, then
slowly fades. This kind of monumentality, seldom attempted in rock and
rarely achieved, embodies the Starship’s aesthetic/political/spiritual
cosmology. The result is absolutely thrilling. Peaks almost as high are
attained on the shorter “Love Lovely Love,” a beautiful
call-and-response between singer Marty Balin and Craig Chaquico’s
guitar, and on the tougher, bluesier “Dance with the Dragon.” Though it
has many fine moments, the medley, “Song to the Sun/Ozymandias/Don’t Let
It Rain” lacks “St. Charles” ‘s unity and comes dangerously close to
being pretentious.
(full version: rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/spitfire-205883/) Review by Stephen Holden. August 26, 1976
01. Cruisin' (05:31)
02. Dance With The Dragon (05:03)
03. Hot Water (03:18)
04. St. Charles (06:43)
05. Song To The Sun / Ozymandias / Don't Let It Rain (07:18)
06. With Your Love (03:39)
07. Switchblade (04:01)
08. Big City (03:24)
09. Love Lovely Love (03:32)
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