The Great Escape

It has taken the Coach and Four three years to craft a follow-up to its debut album, Unlimited Symmetry, perhaps in part due to personnel changes. As of this release, co-founding member Tony Dixon is gone, replaced by bassist Brandon Robertson, and keyboard player Jon David Lovelace also has departed, leaving the band a quartet. (The presence of keyboards on the album's last two tracks, however, suggests Lovelace may have been around for some of the recording.) That quartet is largely devoted to guitar pop and guitar rock on these seven tracks, which run a mere twenty-seven-and-a-half minutes. In fact, two of them, "Sleep Skirt" and "Double H," are instrumentals. The latter, despite the organ part, is reminiscent of the kind of guitar playing Eric Clapton and George Harrison put on their album of the early '70s. But the crucial track is the title song, which dispenses with its lyrics early and goes into a powerful guitar crescendo. The Coach and Four makes striking music with simple elements, and no more effectively than on that extended coda.