Review: Kansas – Song For America (1975)

Song For America is the second studio album by American band Kansas.

From the outset, Kansas’s forte has been to combine British-influenced progressive rock with a generous helping of American boogie rock, AOR and even a touch of country rock. This has been both the band’s weakness and strength. At times, this mixture has led to uneven albums, with these different elements clashing uncomfortably, but at its best, the result is quite powerful and original.

Song For America showcases this Kansas mix at its most effective. The band’s main songwriters, Steve Walsh (keyboards/vocals) and Kerry Livgren (guitars/keyboards), complement each other perfectly, with Walsh’s earthier rock tracks supporting Livgren’s more ambitious prog-rock excursions, and vice versa.

kansas_band
These farmers knew how to rock.

The album kicks off with a bang with Walsh and Livgren’s gritty, dirty, fast-paced southern rock track ”Down The Road,” which is street-credible right down to its lyrics (there are pimps and speed freaks!). ”Down The Road” is an excellent combination of prog-like skillful musicianship and rock-like energy. The song is sung, exceptionally, by the band’s violinist Robby Steinhardt, and he does a surprisingly convincing job.

After Down The Road, we move more clearly into progressive rock with Livgren’s ten-minute Song For American. The music in the song has a delightful, world-embracing grandeur and fresh, clear-eyed optimism, but the lyrics also paint a darker picture, as the song’s story, as I understand it, is roughly about how Native Americans are forced to watch as white men selfishly rape the virgin American wilderness.

”Song For America” is an exceptionally tightly composed song for a rock band, as Livgren carefully composed all the musicians’ parts, and this is evident in the natural flow of the composition, which has no unnecessary moments and very smooth transitions from one section to another. In my opinion, ”Song For America” is the best song of Kansas’ entire career.

The album Song For America is not super complex music on the progressive rock scale at any point, but even the title track has plenty of twists and turns, and most importantly, the band navigates through the many twists and turns with impressive smoothness, both in terms of playing and arrangement. This applies to most of the songs on the album, but especially to the title track.

The 8-minute ”Lamplight Symphony” that concludes side A is a magnificent mini-epic, making the first half of the album almost perfect.

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Side B is a little more uneven. The fine balance between rock and prog achieved in the first half is immediately shattered by ”Lonely Street.” Composed by the band as a whole, minus Livgren, ”Lonely Street” is a rather dull blues jam. The song is not a complete fiasco, though, as Walsh sings it convincingly and the band plays the simple riffs tightly, but overall the album would definitely have been stronger and more coherent without it.

After ”Lonely Street,” ”The Devil Game” raises the bar a little and sounds a bit like a more straightforward, Americanized version of Gentle Giant. However, it doesn’t quite measure up to the first three songs on the album.

Fortunately, Kansas still has one more ace up its sleeve, and the album ends on a positive note with the grandly titled ”Incomudro – Hymn to the Atman.” This 12-minute, majestic and fateful song delightfully lives up to its name. As a composition, ”Incomudro” is not as convincing as ”Song For America,” being more reliant on long solos, but fortunately, the violin/keyboard and guitar solos it offers are all quite enjoyable to listen to. However, the drum solo in the middle of the song, which plays with a phasing effect, goes too far. It is anything but interesting and shows the band’s rather poor taste. Phil Ehart is a good drummer, but based on this, he should not be playing drum solos.

If we ignore Ehart’s silly drum solo, ”Incomudro” demonstrates quite impressively how well Kansas managed to balance the solo roles of the keyboards and guitar. On top of that, Kansas had two guitarists (Rich Williams and Kerry Livgren) and two keyboardists (Livgren again and Walsh), even though they didn’t always play together on every song. On top of that, the band even managed to sneak in violinist Robby Steinhardt! Contrary to all expectations, it works without the songs becoming musically congested or the competing musicians resorting to distracting showboating.

One of the erroneous clichés about progressive rock is the claim that prog bands don’t know how to rock. This is, of course, nonsense, and Kansas’s Song For America is a prime example of how it is possible to make complex, detailed, brain-stimulating music that still rocks with a raw edge and kicks the listener in the teeth.

Song For America is not only Kansas’ finest album, but also one of the best North American prog albums of the 1970s. Song For America gave Kansas’ career a big boost, but these farmers only became true rock stars the following year when Leftoverture hit the charts and sold millions of copies, propelled by the hit song ”Carry On Wayward Son.”

Best tracks: “Down The Road”, ”Song For America” ja ”Lamplight Symphony”

Rating: 4 out of 5.
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

You can find more articles about American records here >

Tracks:

Side A
1. ”Down the Road” Steve Walsh, Kerry Livgren 3:43
2. ”Song for America” Livgren 10:03
3. ”Lamplight Symphony” Livgren 8:17
Side B
4. ”Lonely Street” Walsh, Dave Hope, Rich Williams, Phil Ehart 5:43
5. ”The Devil Game” Walsh, Hope 5:04
6. ”Incomudro – Hymn to the Atman” Livgren 12:11

Musicians:

Steve Walsh: organ, ARP and Moog synthesizers, vocals, piano Kerry Livgren: electric guitar and rhythm guitar, Moog and ARP synthesizers, ARP synthesized strings, piano Robby Steinhardt: violin, vocals Rich Williams: electric guitar and acoustic guitar Dave Hope: bass guitar Phil Ehart: drums, glockenspiel, Moog drums, gong

Producer: Jeff Glixman, Wally Gold

Label Kirshner/Epic

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