Search - Strawbs :: Bursting at the Seams

Bursting at the Seams
Strawbs
Bursting at the Seams
Genres: Folk, Pop, Rock
 
  •  Track Listings (13) - Disc #1

Digitally remastered 1998 reissue on A&M, and the CD debut of their 1973 album for the label. Features the original cover art & all of the original cuts, plus three bonus tracks: 'Will You Go', 'Backside' and 'Lay ...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Strawbs
Title: Bursting at the Seams
Members Wishing: 9
Total Copies: 0
Label: Universal I.S.
Release Date: 7/13/1998
Album Type: Extra tracks, Import, Original recording remastered
Genres: Folk, Pop, Rock
Styles: British & Celtic Folk, Folk Rock, Progressive, Progressive Rock
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 731454093620

Synopsis

Album Description
Digitally remastered 1998 reissue on A&M, and the CD debut of their 1973 album for the label. Features the original cover art & all of the original cuts, plus three bonus tracks: 'Will You Go', 'Backside' and 'Lay Down' (Single Version). 13 tracks total.

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CD Reviews

The breakthrough album for the old/new Strawbs lineup
Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 02/03/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)

"It is ironic that "Bursting at the Seams" was the break through album for the Strawbs because it marked the last major transformation of the group as Lambert replaced Hudson & Ford as the secondary creative force behind David Cousins. Hudson & Ford provides the diverse offers of the airy "Lady Fuschia" and the pub favorite "Part Of The Union," while Lambert's first offering with the group, "The Winter and the Summer" is his best for my money. Hudson & Ford also team up with Cousins on the Pavan half of "Tears and Pavan," which is a personal favorite (I used it as music for scene changes in a one-act production of Christopher Fry's "The Lady's Not For Burning"). "Down By The Sea" is not only one of the first big hits for the group, but perhaps their biggest as well. One of the DJs in Albuquerque gave the song some serious airplay and as a result the group was able to do a concert in that particular neck of the woods. "Flying," "Stormy Down" and "Lay Down" are the other major Cousins efforts on the album, featuring his diverse vocal stylings, which always tended to remind me of Cat Stevens for some reason, but admittedly not everyone hears the similarities. One interesting retrospective quirk to note: when the Strawbs performed in concert their encore usually consisted of doing "The River" to set up the pounding notes of "Down By The Sea." On the album the songs appear in the reverse order, so just program your CD player accordingly. The bonus tracks are okay, although they do take away from the children singing the last track, "Thank You," one of the more interesting ways to end an album since "Abbey Road.""
Uniquely beautiful
David Worthington | Oklahoma City, OK USA | 03/20/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)

"For more than thirty years, I have comtemplated the unusual balance and beauty of this record. No particular concept, but taken as a whole it is the ultimate concept. A combination of folk and so-called progressive rock like all Strawbs records, but somehow the inspiration never flags from start to finish. The combination of David Cousins' poetry with his own voice is always mesmerizing; something seems to have happened with this work which seems rare even by those standards. I could ultimately only describe this record as inspired and uniquely beautiful. My subjective idea of a perfect record."
Strawbs for the uninitiated
DJ Ed Cyphers | Pittsburgh, PA | 02/18/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)

"Warning: this review will begin as analysis and end in unabashed fanspeak; so it is with the things I love too much...Bursting At The Seams is the ideal place to start in getting your ears around the Strawbs catalog. The fourth of their seven-LP output while on the A@M label, it marks a transitional period between the more pastoral/acoustic earlier work and the "proggier", more electric later output.



But despite being plagued with the lineup changes that caused the stylistic musical shifts, Strawbs weren't in the business of mediocrity and Bursting At The Seams is no mere "transitional album" in their catalog. Rather it is a high-water mark, along with "Grave New World" before it and "Hero And Heroine" after--their period of greatest musical fertility and lyrical depth. New members Lambert, Hudson and Ford brought along material strong enough to stand beside--and even complement--the work of one of the most gifted writers in all of rock, David Cousins, himself at the peak of his powers. No one in all of British folk/rock or prog rock or whatever genre you place this genre-defying band had a greater gift for placing the introspective alongside the anthemic, the mystical in the company of the visceral. For a few years during this period, Strawbs (not THE Strawbs, as they are frequently misnamed) made music of a quality rarely seen before or since--a music that didn't sacrifice beauty for power, or power for beauty.



Many, many times in the years when I was discovering this music I imagined I felt the same thing Dave Cousins experienced when he wrote the song "Stormy Down" (which appears on this album). He was "high on Stormy Down thinking of my friends below...but they had gone some other way, they did not want to know..." It would have been utterly futile explaining to my 14-year-old peers the unique beauty I found in this music. Even friends who were into progressive rock seldom scaled ecstatic heights such as these. For me it was--and is--to quote Cousins again, "a glimpse of heaven". My friends at the time, for whom musical quality was measured quantitatively (by the number of decibels) had "gone some other way". But speaking for those of us who DID "want to know", I thank God someone was true enough to himself to write music about the interior life, for those of us just uncool enough in our youth to care about such things. Thank God for songwriters Like Mr. Cousins whose songs were built of such solid stuff that to this day and even in all-acoustic settings (as most Strawbs concerts now are) they bring more force and meaning to bear than the entire collected work of U2, for example. And thank God for songwriters, Cousins being a prime example, who show us rock can be so much greater and more than butt-shaking, ear-shattering party soundtrack music."