Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Fast on the heels of the vinyl reissue of the band’s once ‘forgotten’ album, Has Anyone Here Seen Seigfried?, Ruf Records have once again delved into the history of early American Progressive Rock favourites Pavlov’s Dog, and brings to the attention of the fans and the collectors alike the third album from the group, released originally in 1990, Lost In America.
A much-changed line-up saw only David Surkamp and Douglas Rayburn return after a 14-year hiatus, and whilst Steve Scorfina and Kirk Sarkisian were amply heard as guest musicians, it was to this new age, an up-to-date consideration of where the genre and generation had been taken as the hope of the 1970s gave way to a flashier, suited, high performing period and to a place where the advent of grunge would further distance the art of the Progressive into a narrower stream of conscious.
Lost In America perhaps dwells on that missing period with grace, the elements of how bands such as Rush for example had to adapt to a new way of presenting the genre, how one of the mainstays and leading lights of the second generation of Prog, Marillion, found a new avenue of approach that would eventually propel them even further into the minds of the music loving public, and for Pavlov’s Dog it was, if not the start of a renaissance, then a timely reminder of the prowess that resided in the band from St. Louis.
Joining Messers Surkamp and Rayburn on the album were Frank Kriege on drums, Robert Lloyd on bass, and the superb addition of Michele Isam on saxophone and additional vocals; and it was to this that the possibility of the next stage, cruelly cut short once again the fans had to wait till the official release of the aforementioned Has Anyone Here Seen Seigfried? in 2007, and again another three years for Echo & Boo, by which time only David Surkamp remained from the original and intermediary line ups.
The album though is an affair of rekindled hope, a new dawn of a century just a decade away, and as tracks such as A Hardly Innocent Mind, Not By My Side, Breaking Ice, As Lovers Do, Brown Eyes, and the album title track of Lost In America all appear on the transparent vinyl release, so the wistfulness of expression, of what Time could have offered, should have guaranteed, was sadly the last of what would be a tremendously enjoyable musical experience for the longest of times.
Lost In America, lost it seemed to the world, Pavlov’s Dog, thanks to Ruf Records, have emerged again with their ideals and voice intact, this is no conditioning, no sense of being acclimatised, this is an album or longed for renewal, and in keeping with any contemporary at the time, one seized by the listener with grateful hands.
Ian D. Hall