With Understanding Comes Appreciation
As the 60s abruptly became the 70s, the psychedelia of the former era was transmogrifying into something more sophisticated. With the prog-rock explosive nature of 1969 occurring with bands like East Of Eden and King Crimson forever changing the rock history books, bands who came before who were more focused on the psychedelic pop aspects of the scene rather than the sophisticated compositions of what would develop suddenly found themselves upping their game manyfold and the creative expressions were sudden and highly effective. Caravan was one such band that was one half of The Wilde Flowers, with the other half, of course, being The Soft Machine. While Soft Machine started out on a similar trajectory as their counterparts, they seemed determined to race full speed ahead into the world of jazz and upon every subsequent release jettisoned the rock aspects of their music. Caravan had the complete opposite approach. They simply took the psychedelic pop rock features on their debut album and upped the sophistication several times over and focused MORE on the rock instead of less. The results equated in being one of the most exciting releases to exist in the progressive rock work in the early year of 1970.
After releasing their eponymous debut album in 1968, their label Verve decided to close down their rock and pop division. As such, the band had to wait two years before finally becoming signed to Decca, and releasing their second album. Their first album was fun listening, and certainly quite underrated, but now Caravan were poised to write some of the best and most iconic albums to come out of the Canterbury Scene. In fact, the next four albums in this series are worthy max ratings. With one of the best titles for an album, If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You is not as hippy-esque as the cover photograph would make you believe.
Caravan's second album shows a startling amount of growth since their debut. In the two years since they issued that psych-pop charmer they'd honed their craft, improved their songwriting, developed a taste for epics, started flirting with a little jazz-rock (perhaps inspired by the success of their pals in the Soft Machine), and become the tight unit seen on this album. The band had gone from the psychedelic followers of their debut to innovators in their own right, presenting a Canterburified vision of psychedelic jazz-influenced prog with a more mellow and sunnier attitude than the Softs, with the occasional outbreak of more energetic playing. The end result was good enough that a few months before recording the album Frank Zappa (who was acting as compere at a festival Caravan were performing at, due to a snafu with the Mothers' work visas) spontaneously joined them onstage for a jam —and when your band is good enough that Zappa is that keen to play with you, you know you've arrived.