Customer Reviews

Music in a Doll's House

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4 star:		(1)
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Sometimes you need to go back and experience what was to wonder what could have been. No other debut album from a band can match the force of this one from Family, and for more than 30 years, this work has remained a testimony to what rock music should be about: creative, mind-bending, pulsing, twisting, strange, engaging, and even failing. The CD is full of gems, but the crowning glory may be "Old Songs, New Songs." Chappo's unearthly delivery of the main vocals contrasted with the falsetto of reedman Jim King's vocal on the chorus could stop traffic. Charlie Whitney offers up one of the coolest wah-wah pedal-powered solos toward the last minute of the song against the rock solid drums of the great Rob Towsend and the bass line of the late Rick Grech.

Be warned, however, if you cut your teeth on what has been on commercial FM radio for the past 20 years, you may experience osmotic shock when listening to Family. Had Family achieved the popularity it so deserved, then maybe today folks would know that the best rock band to ever feature violin, saxophone, guitar, bass, drums, and vocals may very well have been Family, not the Dave Matthews Band.

Beautiful to have this original work lovingly remastered after a couple of decades of very worn vinyl. What made Family innovators was the songwriting team of Roger Chapman and Charlie Whitney. Be it psychedelia or British music hall, folk or straight up rock, there was no confusing Family with any other band of it's era. Listen to producer Dave Mason's (Traffic) headphone ready mix on classics The Chase and See Through Windows, to see how this album holds up thirty years on. The lone Ric Grech tune ,Hey Mr. Policeman takes on a new melancholy with his passing. Enigmatic as this band was, the real mystery was how strong an impact they had on the Isles and how unjustly this recording was ingnored on this side of the Atlantic. Yet timeless is timeless and here's your opportunity. Highly recommended!

This is the type of music that makes people call for their mommy. Just kidding... but this is definitely some wonderfully challenging music without being pretentious or distant and difficult. This album does not have a bad track and each song fits into the other quite well although "Never like This" is a bit out of place (only song not written by a family member, that goes to original Traffic member and producer of this album, Dave Mason) but that is not to say that it's not a bad song. I highly recommend this album on the wings of songs like THE CHASE, MELLOWING GREY, SEE THROUGH WINDOWS, THE VOYAGE, THE BREEZE, and 3 X TIME.

This may have actually been a concept album. The concept would have been "We're doing drugs and, although we like them, they are really confusing us." Music In a Doll's House is a raging slab of psychedelia run through a blender. It is an astonishing piece of work filled with paranoia, minor keys, and snippets of themes that recur in drastically altered forms listed as "Variations On A Theme of ..." Acid flashbacks, perhaps.

This would all be so much hippie marginalia but for the fact that Family's musicianship, songwriting and vision were incomparable. Although unmistakably a product of the "60's, Music In A Doll's House doesn't sound retro -- it still sounds visionary. This album would sound cutting-edge-original if it were released today, tomorrow or in 2001. There is nothing else like it, and probably never will be. Family never attempted to repeat this, although one could say the same of any other album they released.

Music in a Doll's House, well, what can I say? Unlike a lot of their psychedelic contemporaries of the time, like Jefferson Airplane, this one really stands the test of time real well. While a lot of the studio effects like phasing is rather dated sounding, it works real well here. To me, this album sounds exactly like how Traffic's Mr. Fantasy would sound like if it was fronted by Peter Gabriel (although Roger Chapman's voice has much more vibrato). In fact, this album was produced by Dave Mason, so that explains a lot. And it's also well known that Family had a big influence on Genesis during their early days. That's why "Mellowing Grey" sounds like something off From Genesis to Revelation, although this one is much better than anything on that album, because of better production and even a real Mellotron. Music in a Doll's House also features Richard Grech, pre-Blind Faith, so that's one for all you trivia buffs out there. Other goodies on this album are "Winter Time", "Mr. Policeman", "See Through Windows", and "The Breeze". Most of these songs are short, but they are just so amazing. I understand Family did much better in Britain than America. It's either Roger Chapman's voice didn't go down too well with American audiences, or the fact the band's relationship had soured with Fillmore promotor Bill Graham when they had a fistfight with him at the Fillmore East. But whatever the case, Music In a Doll's House is a wonderful example of the psychedelic 1960s, and of all the albums in this genre from that time I've heard (Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly, The Doors, Electric Prunes, even early Traffic), this by far the best one and holds up best to repeated listens (something I can't say with a lot of those other bands of the time).

Family's angular, art-school sensibility propelled by pub-rock energy made "Music In A Doll's House" a 1968 breakthrough. Dave Mason (of Traffic) lent a steady hand to the production with avant garde violins by Rick Grech (later of Bind Faith) and bright wind instruments by Jim King. These British progressive rockers managed to find their way to the mainstream through Charlie Whitney's sturdy guitar work and Roger Chapman's bleating, histrionic vocals. Suffering from multiple personnel changes, later albums became a bit workmanlike. But the arty, playful inventiveness of "Doll's House" ranks it, in my book, as a turning point.

many critics, regards Family's debut album as their best work. Many of them didnt get wromg. "MUSIC IN A DOLL HOUSE", has all the ingridiands of a winning work: The sleeve is beutiful, the production (DAVE MASON of Traffic) is brilliant. And the songs are beutiful. Roger chapman and Charlie Whitney panned some of the most beutiful song of the late 60's and early 70's, and this album includs some of their best. I also recommand the "entertinment" album, which is excllent as well.

excelente mistura de música psicodélica com algumas pitadas de progressivo (de leve), com um resultado surpreendente, em alguns momentos chega a parecer épico