“Landed” by Can - album review

features in: Album Chart of 1975Album Chart of the Decade: 1970s

TJR says

More conventional than their preceding works, “Landed” can be viewed as the first Can album to look backwards; a confusing step for those who loved the trail-blazing nature of the group’s catalogue to date. The first two tracks were co-written by their live sound mixer, Peter Gilmour. “Full Moon On The Highway” gets the album off to a surprising, but decent, start, regressing by some 8 or 9 years, back to the days of garage psychedelia. To be fair, it had been a live staple of theirs for many years, which perhaps explains a lot. The fantastic “Half Past One” is next and is mind-blowing in its approach – again it’s a psychedelic trip, this time with latin-flavoured rhythms juxtaposed with the deadpan European accent of Irmin Schmidt’s vocal – a rare event in itself – in which he earnestly delivers corny lines such as “And I like your hairdo and your lipstick too, babe” and totally gets away with it. His Manzarek-esque keyboards seal the deal on this fully arresting track. The amazingly regressive start continues with “Hunters And Collectors”, an avant-pop romp which sounds exactly as if Syd Barrett was in the house, directing operations in maverick fashion – it’s interesting if not entirely thrilling. Better, is “Red Hot Indians”, a chipper little afro-funk number which positively clops like a racing camel. Again, shades of late 60s psychedelic guitar garnish the serving. Unfortunately, this is sandwiched between the prog-rock fussiness of “Vernal Equinox” and 13 boring minutes of “Unfinished”, an avant-garde soundscape which bypasses with very little appeal.

The Jukebox Rebel
20–Mar–2007

Tracklist
A1 [03:32] 6.6.png Can - Full Moon On The Highway (Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt, Peter Gilmour) Proto-Punk
A2 [04:39] 8.0.png Can - Half Past One (Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt, Peter Gilmour) Trance Rock
A3 [04:19] 5.4.png Can - Hunters And Collectors (Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt) New Wave
A4 [08:48] 4.2.png Can - Vernal Equinox (Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt) Prog
B1 [05:38] 6.1.png Can - Red Hot Indians (Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt) New Wave
B2 [13:21] 4.2.png Can - Unfinished (Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt) Avant-Garde

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