Cartweels 'cross the floor on hold pending feasibility study. Familiar sound, erratic content.
"If I'm gonna die, gonna die in a VIP room," gravels Gary Brooker. "If I'm gonna croak, no joke/Gonna be behind the velvet rope." Far from A Whiter Shade of Pale's late 60s magical surrealism, the practically pensionable Procol Harum strut the snarly cynicism of burnt-out idealists.
Original non-playing lyricist Keith Reid provides hard rhyming for The VIP Room, The Question, Wall Street Blues, and The Emperor's New Clothes and fellow survivors Brooker (piano) and Matthew Fisher (that organ sound) drive it home with stately anger. Although there's some trudging through Elton John/Phil Collins-style filler involved here, it's the highs that surprise on this their second LP since 1977. It's just hard to keep it up at their time of life.
The illustration shows the quarter-page ad for The Well's on Fire in the same issue of Mojo