K - Point Of Know Return CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

although the added songs only serve to stretch overextended lyric ideas even thinner. The pompous sentiment expressed in virtually all Kansas songs is a wan and ridiculous rehash of the bargain-basement exoticism employed by the British art-rock crowd. The band's strength is in the purposefulness of its ensemble playing, because there isn't a virtuoso soloist on board. Keyboardist Steve Walsh's Keith Emerson Rick Wakeman imitations provide most of the single-line excitement, and his capsule presentation of the first Emerson, Lake & Palmer album, "The Spider," almost gets to the point where it sounds like there's something going on. But the whole thing is unsettling—I have a feeling we're not in rock & roll. (RS 256)

JOHN SWENSON