Sometimes it’s genuinely hard to understand how excellent records like this debut album never got the recognition they deserved. And that ultimately meant a promising band never had the meteoric, major career it should have enjoyed. Crack the Sky is one of those cases.
If you don’t know this band, think of this discovery as an early Christmas present. And if you already knew them, take this as an excuse to revisit them. And if you like what you hear, you should know they’re still active — this year they released “From the Wood” (2023).
Back in 1975, they put together an outstanding record full of diversity, musical richness, and a complexity that’s never at odds with listener-friendliness, and above all, great moments of fun, like the track that opens the LP, “Hold On”, fusing funk, progressive rock and choruses in the purest hard-rock style.
At certain moments, the depth of the orchestration reveals a musical language of real substance, like the closing sections of “Ice” or the passages within “Sea Epic”, which at the same time contrast with the wit of the lyrics — like the scene where a cabin boy begs a pirate to save his captain, or his admiral, since they’re more important than him, and in the end, pirate and cabin boy decide to save the cook instead, because they’re hungry. And all of this set within an enormous amount of musical theatricality.
Or “She’s a Dancer”, where you eventually realise that “he’s” actually the dancer, though whoever’s singing doesn’t seem to mind (a bold thing to say back in 1975). Or the cruel “Robots for Ronnie”, in which a boy innocently tells his father, underscored by childlike string motifs, that they need to buy robots for a classmate nobody loves, so he’ll finally have some company.
But beyond the hilarious lyrics, I can assure you there are also compositions here with genuinely serious arrangements and a modern, rock-driven musical language, one with hefty doses of classicism too.
The people behind this essential record are: Joey D’Amico (drums and vocals), Joe Macre (bass and vocals), Jim Griffiths (guitar and vocals), John Palumbo (vocals, keyboards and guitar) and Rick Witkowski (guitar and percussion).
And as you can already guess from the members’ roles above, one of the record’s defining traits is how full it is of great choral moments, which let some genuinely complex passages come across as wonderfully warm — before you know it, you’ll be singing along to choruses like the one in “Surf City”, which sounds like the Beach Boys went partying with Frank Zappa. Or the gorgeous, as-American-as-it-gets vocal harmonies on the album’s closing track: “Sleep”.
It’s worth noting that online you’ll find versions of “Crack the Sky” with as many as thirteen tracks. That’s because the CD edition included songs from other releases — I don’t know why. Personally, I prefer sticking to the 9 original tracks and enjoying them as they were meant to be heard.
Writer: David Sàez