Kayak - The Last Encore (1976)

Tracklist:
1. Back to the Front
2. Nothingness
3. Love of a Victim
4. Land on the Water
5. The Last Encore
6. Do You Care
7. Still My Heart Cries For You
8. Relics From a Distant Age
9. Love Me Tonight/Get on Board
10. Evocation
11. Raid Your Own House
12. Well Done

The Very Last Encore – 9/10

After the already great Royal Bed Bouncer, Kayak continued in the same vein and released The Last Encore. The ties with debut See See the Sun are now fully disconnected and this album is more of the best side of Royal Bed Bouncer. Though this album did not contain a single to climb many charts, I find it to be Kayak’s finest album, even though some come very close. Unfortunately, this is the last album to feature this lineup and the last album before the reunion in 1999 to feature fellow composer and occasional vocalist Pim Koopman, leaving solely Scherpenzeel to fulfill that task on later albums. But here, we can fully enjoy the golden combination of composing talents, Werner’s unique voice, Slager’s shiver-sending guitar solos and brilliant songwriting one more time.

When I heard this album for the first time I hated it. I thought it to be the worst Kayak album ever and was ready to put it in the sideboard to let dust cover it, but something unexplainable was drawing me back to the album and eventually I fell in love with it. This album’s hooks reveal themselves only to those who can show patience for the music, because that’s what it needs. “Back to the Front” for example sounds so odd at first glance. Some piano chord is being played in fast staccato with Werner’s always odd voice singing lots of words in a monotonous melody. Eventually when the song really starts we get to recognize music there, but it’s not the catchiest music ever, yet once you found the hook, you’re hooked and can’t slip off the hook! Whether the song is a fast-paced rocker like “Love of a Victim” or “Still my Heart Cries for You”, or a sensitive ballad like “Evocation” or “Nothingness”, or an epic anthem like “The Last Encore” or “Land on the Water”, every song is in every aspect topnotch. Slager gives us less of his more complex solos but instead plays subtle, appropriate gentle solos with perhaps more musical value.

There is however one thing that restrains me from giving this album the perfect rating. There is one little abomination is the shape of “Love Me Tonight/Get on Board”, which is just awful. It’s easily the worst song Kayak ever recorded or dared to put on an album. It begins as some 1950s piano recording with some weird voice in the effect of an old 1940s microphone singing a stupid tune from a 1930s movie. The second part is some fanfare-inspired march-like thing, which is drenched in the same dated sound. Luckily this track doesn’t last for three minutes, but it still breaks up the album. And then there is “Raid Your Own House”, which is a nice song, on par with the rest of the album, apart from its bridge, which sounds so un-be-lie-va-bly uninspired. Apart from these little complaints the good side of the album overshadows this by far and modern technology allows us to skip certain songs without too much trouble, so we can still name The Last Encore the best Kayak album, even without the abomination.

In short, The Last Encore picks up where Royal Bed Bouncer had left and again raised the bar for its follow-up. I would recommend this to possibly future Kayak fans anytime.

Strongest tracks: “Land on the Water”, “The Last Encore”, “Do You Care” and “Relics from a Distant Age”.
Weakest track: “Love Me Tonight/Get on Board”.