9 tracks · 38 min
1976 was hard for NAZARETH: their manager died in a plane crash and the band got on a two-albums-per-year treadmill again, but what's more important, the only way after the height which was "Hair Of The Dog" was down. All this could be wearing and tearing for the band, yet with the first album of that year, they turned the troubles into success, to let themselves shamble a bit on the second one. Still, laying down both LPs in Canada, where NAZ had a healthy fambase, seemed to have been the only concession to the unrelenting schedule the quartet lived by. The group's modus operandi is the main concept of "Close Enough For Rock 'n' Roll" which presents a bold structure, not unlike its contemporary "Hotel California", beginning with one of their greatest compositions, with the rest, as fine as it is, paling in the hit's shadow. The four-part "Telegram" comes into focus little by little, with the anxious guitar riff joined by piano tinkling, and seriously, to relay the touring travails, the repeating vocal figures punctured with the bass and drums careful throb, before the echo of "This Flight Tonight" kicks the picture into its groovy fullest. But then, the Scots' humor rears its hea…
