Kansas - "Point of Know Return" (1977)

Now I like "Carry On My Wayward Son" as much as the next guy, but it doesn't change the fact that Kansas sucks. I went into this album with expectations based on George Starostin's reviews of the group, and these expectations were almost perfectly met. Kansas's schtick is basically a weird hybrid of bluesy bar-rock (i.e., the more generic rock songs on classic rock radio) and elements stolen from superior British prog-rock bands (Yes, Genesis, ELP). Most of the time, this is a bad, bad combination, culminating in the awful 7-minute "Closet Chronicles" that closes the first side with banal vocals and several minutes of frenetic organ soloing. I don't even like ELP's keyboard wanking, so why would I like this?

Still, Point of Know Return is not a totally horrible album. The title track is one that I have heard many times before on the radio without actually realizing who it was. It's still dorky, but actually not a bad synthesis of straight-ahead classic rock and prog, since it keeps things relatively simple and only uses the keyboards as accompaniment. So I guess it is possible for their sound to work, but every time they range out and get more progressive, the results are almost invariably bad, since the longer songs lack any real complexity.

Oh yeah, this album does have classic rock staple "Dust in the Wind" on it. "Dust in the Wind," being an acoustic ballad with strings, isn't representative of the sound of the rest of the album whatsoever. But it does still manage to epitomize Kansas. For about 90 seconds, I am able to find the song enjoyable, as the vocal melody moves me despite myself. But then the generic string parts come in, the vocals become more plaintive, and the result is that they way oversell it, thinking that the song is as good as "Yesterday" when it's really just a pleasant acoustic melody with generic soul-searching lyrics. My point is that their songwriting isn't inherently terrible, but it isn't great either, and when they consistently try to make more out of their songs than what they are, the results to me are worse than if they opted for a more simplified approach. So in the end, this is definitely a blue bin album.