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