★★★★★
Yes, the agonising conundrum at the heart of Procol Harum's lengthy tale is the fact that the band responsible for one of the best-known, best-loved and, well, best songs of the 60s - a song even The Beatles genuflected to - could be simultaneously so appallingly undervalued...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
Procol Harum's Procol's Ninth is a very different album for those unfamiliar with this act's full catalogue. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, 2 famous rock and soul songwriters, produced the album, and it shows. It is as though Leiber and Stoller reminded this British band about all the goodness to be found in early American rock & roll. The group obviously knows its way around this pioneering music, too. Procol Harum can sound a little stuffy to some ears...
- www.antimusic.com
2011-05-04
★★★★★
Something Magic is not Procol Harum's best musical moment. It was released in 1977, after the band had previously issued the wonderful Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller produced Procol's Ninth. It just comes off pretentious and uninspired. Why the group would want to record an annoyingly stop-and-start progressive rock excess of "The Mark of The Claw", after all the sincere soul-blues of Procol's Ninth is confusing -- to say the least. Progressive rock had its place in rock history...
- www.antimusic.com
2011-05-04
★★★★★
Progressive rock--an ugly term for sometimes beautiful music. Procol Harum, a British band best known for "A Whiter Shade of Pale", has been branded prog more than a few times throughout their prolific career...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-02-14
★★★★★
Recorded last December at the end of the 2003 world tour, it's spooky watching Gary Brooker singing "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" so many years after it scored 1967's summer of love. Yet his voice hasn't altered one iota. A third of the 21 tracks come from their 2003 album, The Well's On Fire. But it's old favourites like "Homburg", "Shine On Brightly" and "A Salty Dog" that command all the attention. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
The stately music of Procol Harum, first heard on their huge 1967 hit "A Whiter Shade Of Pale", enjoyed an erratic vogue for some 10 years before the arrival of punk saw the group fold. Reforming in 1991, they made a final album and released four singles from it, none of them becoming hits. This well-annotated and colourfully designed three-CD set collects all of the band's singles, some in variant forms, painting a kaleidoscopic picture of one of Britain's best second division groups...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
A new discovery; haven't stopped playing it since seeing them at the Fillmore.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Not bad for profit taking. The melodies are at their ingratiating schlock-classical best, the tempos up enough to render the lyrics extraneous. Among the four never-on-LP inducements are "Lime Street Blues," a jolly barrelhouse that mentions underpants, and "Homburg," which introduces their "multilingual business friend...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Gigging with a local band this way would be a terrible idea for more accomplished rock and rollers, but as it is, the enthusiastic provincials kick Procol's ass on "Conquistador," great meaningless fun in the tradition of "Quick Joey Small." And you have to admit that the string and horn arrangements are different.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
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