NEKTAR — Sounds Like This (review)

Album · 1973 · Proto-Metal

2/5 · 2024-03-25
siLLy puPPy

More of an impromptu recording than a proper album, NEKTAR followed up its first two albums with a radical new approach. While the first two albums excelled in crafting psychedelic space rock with heavier prog workouts, the band’s third release …SOUNDS LIKE THIS was created to showcase a more stripped down approach that focused on simple compositions that were designed for lengthy jamming sessions. The idea was to capture the spirit of NEKTAR’s live shows without the unpredictable results of recording a live album’s worth of material. Basically recorded live in the studio in front of a small group of friends, the material was mined from songs that were written long before the album’s recording and had been played live for a few years.

This must’ve been a real shock for NEKTAR fans during the day after two stellar prog albums that focused on tight-knit lengthy composiitons with alternating trippy psychedelic space rock along with heavier prog rock complexities. Sort of going the way of Uriah Heep that delivered a few proggy albums before jumping on the hard rock bandwagon, …SOUNDS LIKE THIS delivered fairly basic hard rock songs that focused on extended improvisational jams. The album was recorded live in a single session and to be honest it really sounds like it. Sounding more like an early garage rock band of the 60s that started to dabble in the world of proto-prog, this third release was originally a double album which featured nine tracks at nearly 75 minutes playing time.

The album starts out poorly with “Good Day” and immediately establishes the band as a rather dumbed down version of itself with repetitive guitar riffing with some funk styles added and the occasional guitar soloing. Sounds of folk, country rock and the occasional space rock finds their way into the overall mix. After two albums of extremely brilliant instrumental interplay that didn’t miss a beat, all of a sudden NEKTAR sounded sloppy as if they all woke up one morning and went right to the studio to record this album. The overall impression it leaves me is that if this was what they sounded like live then i would’ve felt ripped off. The album is filled with moments that just rub me the wrong way. An ill-fated attempt of throwing The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” into the opening track just sounds plain awful. The track “1-2-3-4” sounds like a stupid nursery rhyme set to hard rock only with the skillset of a grade school troupe.

By the time the second album begins it gets even worse with tracks like “A Day In The Life Of A Preacher” sounding like a harder rock version of The Grateful Dead. Roy Albrighton’s vocals which sounded crisp and in top form on the brilliant earlier albums suddenly sounds strained and tired. And this is for the album’s long and tiring entirety. If the band’s intent was to sound as awful as they possibly could then they truly succeeded as to my ears i find little redeeming value on …SOUNDS LIKE THIS. While the 70s delivered some of the best hard rock ever to have been recorded, the songs on this album just sound plain boring and lack any characteristics that make them memorable or even tolerable. This was a decisive album upon its release and remains so to this day with yours truly falling on the side that finds this album rather torturous.

I listen to this from time to time just to see if there’s something i’ve been missing but every time i give this album a chance to sink in in some positive way, i’m literally bored to tears and find this to be one of the most non-innovative and generic hard rock albums of the entire 70s. None of the musicians excel in any particular way and the entire album feels like its forced. Add to that the production and mixing resulted in a heavier than expected sound effect and it all sounds so unstructured that there’s really no backbone to the album. A single album’s worth would’ve been bad enough but to extend this to four sides of a vinyl LP adds insult to injury. At least bands like Uriah Heep crafted beautiful hard rock albums after their early prog years but that’s not the case with NEKTAR. To my ears this sounds like a long lost NEKTAR album that was recorded way before the brilliant debut “Journey To The Centre Of The Eye” almost like a demo. Ironically the album cover is my favorite of their entire canon but i only get a 1 star enjoyment value out of this. For fans and collectors only. I keep this in my collection really for the eye candy album cover art alone.