Anchor 1975 / Think Like A Key 2025
Swooping down on the prairies of Blighty, four horsemen of British country rock dispatch an obscure gem that, refreshed, shines through the ages.
Moonrider
Back in the ’70s, supergroups seemed to be thin on the ground, but of those precious few which entered the scene then, this ensemble must have been the least likely, because in the center of the London collective – singing, producing and penning most of the material – was Keith West of TOMORROW and “Excerpt From A Teenage Opera” fame. Failing to recapture the past glories and unable to find any better vehicle than “My White Bicycle” to progress into the future, despite having a solid cache of tunes waiting to be recorded, West may have lost his way, yet an unexpected opportunity manifested itself after the release of an album titled “Wherever My Love Goes” in 1974. Keith’s only solo longplay to date, that platter featured violinist John Weider, whom he knew as a guitarist with THE ANIMALS and who at the time had passed through FAMILY to become a multi-instrumentalist with STUD, and the two W’s struck a creative partnership. Thus, MOONRIDER emerged to shine for a short while.
Fleshing out the ranks with bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Chico Greenwood, West and Weider corralled a set of countrified cuts that highlighted their talents as composers – and, to a lesser extent, their six-string work and a blend of their voices. So although the funky “Angel Of Mercy” opens the proceedings in quite an in-your-face fashion, electric piano helping build up intensity before Keith’s supple pipes, his colleagues’ vocal harmonies, and John’s scintillating licks soften the drive, acoustically colored tracks like the mandolin-adorned “Having Someone” delicately glimmer rather than blind the listener. And though the loose “Livin’ On A Main Street” evokes a bluesy romp Keith used to engage in with THE IN CROWD one decade earlier, and the tight “Good Things” finds Weider at the mike, giving a new lease of life to a number he used to perform with STUD by adding an Irish-Appalachian grace to it, there’s urban melancholia in the otherwise upbeat “Our Day’s Gonna Come” and the nicely polished “Too Early In The Morning” where the rhythm unit reach for dynamic nuances.
Still, it’s the elegantly boisterous, shuffle-and-riff-propelled “Golddigger” and the predatorily twangy “Danger In The Nigh” that compete for the pride of place here. They also turn into blistering showcases on stage, as suggested by live takes on these songs laid down for “Old Grey Whistle Test” and, alongside four other album pieces, for BBC’s “In Concert” programme, making a treasure trove of rarities appended now to the platter’s 50th anniversary reissue. A pity, those videos of didn’t resurface yet, and the slider-caressed, infectious “Ridin’ For A Fall” perfectly sums up the group’s stance until the effervescent ballad “As Long As It Takes” offers orchestral magnificence to shape a finale, and the “I Found Love” single opts for a groovy, finely filigreed sprightliness.
It didn’t take long for the quartet to disintegrate and be forgotten; it shouldn’t take long with this reissue for them to be recalled and revered.
****4/5
