Friday, August 2, 2024

Bee Gees - Trafalgar [MFSL CD] (1971)

Year: September 1971 (CD 1996)
Label: Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (US), UDCD 680
Style: Pop, Ballads
Country: England
Time: 47:34
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 278 Mb

Trafalgar's "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?" was the Bee Gee's first number one single. Despite this chart success, this record doesn't rate as highly as some of their other albums of this period due to somewhat lackluster material. * * *
- Jim Worbois, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.
The Bee Gees had spent some years in the wilderness before Trafalgar, but the quality of the album more than made up for the wait. Recorded between January and April 1971, it revealed the Brothers Gibb truly working together in harmony again.
A few things had changed in the re-formed band. They were now much more pedantic about their songwriting credits, and Robin -- having proved himself during the two-year split with the magnificent Robin's Reign -- exercised his right to do nothing but sing, so half the album does not feature him at all.
Bad news first: "Don't Wanna Live Inside Myself" pays too much homage to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," while Robin's funeral Edwardian parlor song "Dearest" is horrendous. But the rest is pure lush pop brilliance. Maurice's two solo compositions show him finally coming out as a truly great songwriter. "Lion in Winter" is infectiously experimental -- much of it is just drums, and the rhythm expands epically at the end. The usual bizarrely maudlin lyrics are in evidence in spades: "Now I feel as good as if I were dead" is a gem, but "Somebody crown the clown with the red balloon" takes the trophy. And the hits kept coming, "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" providing a U.S. No. 1.
The cover was the usual early 1970s Bee Gees strangeness, the group enacting the death of Nelson in the gatefold, new member Geoff Bridgeford reading a Beezer comic. The lads' dad, Hugh, is in the picture because, apparently, he was "just there."
- David Nichols, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, 2005.
(superseventies.com/spbeegees2.html?no_redirect=true)

01. How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (04:00)
02. Israel (03:46)
03. The Greatest Man In The World (04:20)
04. It's Just The Way (02:36)
05. Remembering (04:04)
06. Somebody Stop The Music (03:34)
07. Trafalgar (03:55)
08. Don't Wanna Live Inside Myself (05:27)
09. When Do I (04:00)
10. Dearest (03:54)
11. Lion In Winter (04:03)
12. Walking Back To Waterloo (03:50)

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