Bakery - 1972 - Momento

Bakery

1972

Momento

01. Holocaust
02. Pete For Jennie
03. Living With A Memory
04. S.S. Bounce
05. The Gift
06. When I'm Feeling
07. Faith To Sing A Song

John Worrall (vocals, flute)
Tom Davidson (vocals)
Eddie McDonald (bass)
Rex Bullen (keyboards)
Hank Davis (drums)

Bakery were an Australian group which is quite unknown to the prog community, it's not that they released a masterpiece album and have to be widely known, but they were a part of the history of prog rock in the early 70's. Their first album 'Rock Mass For Love' is an effort to fuse some preaching at mass and rock n' roll, some kind of a 'jesus christ superstar' for the young crowd. No interest for progers though. Their second album 'Momento' is a different story and represent the bands most creative peak, an album trying to go further towards progressive realms. Unfortunately this stayed their only complete album to date, because of their break up in around 1975.

The bands style is a mix between heavy progressive, jazz and a slight psychedelic feel. The sound is quite rich sometimes including flue, keys, piano and saxophone. The writing is good and the band is trying to go from one idea to the next easily passing through some instrumentals on the way or solos. Mixing between calm acoustic parts and heavier rockier moments. As progressive as they are trying to be they are featuring some more straight forward rocky stuff as well, and some album fillers too. The more progressive songs 'Living With a Memory' and 'Holocaust' are definitely better, 'holocaust' is where everything falls right in place and manage to be exciting, containing some wild guitar playing, very good keys and some wacky sax, 'Living With a Memory' is good the solos are good, sound is good but everything is just good and not amazing. 'S.S. Bounce' is a rocky song failing to reach black sabbath on their worst day in the 70's. 'The Gift' is an improvement and although it's 8 minutes long it is not progressive but definitely electrifing with heavy keys, heavy guitar and killer main riff sounding like Deep Purple, also one of the highlights.

This could have been a great stepping stone for the band to go from, but instead it was their swan song. The band kept on going for a few years, but never released anything maybe due to some personnel changes, and that is a real shame.