Record basics
- Album name: Wingless Angels
- Artist name: John Stewart
- Year: 1975
- Number of discs: one
- Label: RCA Records
- Collection: Brenner / Gessner
- Who owned it: my father
- Buy it on Amazon: $12.99
My review
Level of familiarity before listening
I am not familiar at all with John Stewart or this record.
What I expected
My father informed me that John Stewart was a singer-songwriter and guitarist.
What it was actually like
This was an extremely unenjoyable mix of mostly soft rock with a little bit of country.
Two of the songs sounded very slightly familiar to me: Hung On The Heart (Of A Man Back Home), which had a catchy chorus, and Survivors.
It was difficult to pick a worst song. Ride Stone Blind seemed at the beginning like it would be lively and good, but was actually terrible, and Some Kind of Love was a piano ballad. I strongly disliked the orchestral backing on the keyboard-based Wingless Angels/Survivors II, and was also annoyed that Rose Water used a little bit of steel guitar without really being a country song at all.
Mazatlan/Adelita was relatively lively and ended as a mariachi song, which was not what I expected. Let the Big Horse Run, the record’s best song by far, was almost a solid country-rock song with electric guitars, steel guitar and notable percussion, but I still did not like the choral backing vocals.
Grade
2/5: bad, but I was able to listen to the whole thing
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