String Driven Thing - Please Mind Your Head (Reissue, Remastered) (1974/2010)

String Driven Thing may have disintegrated when Chris and Pauline Adams departed, but Graham Smith didn't let that deter him. He rebuilt the band from the foundation up and shifted the focus from progressive folk to a more straight-ahead rock & roll format, a sonic sensibility helped along by vocalist Kim Beacon, whose Rod Stewart-styled vocals provided a front to the heavy-hooked guitar-driven songs. The new format didn't win many points with the band's old fans, but String Driven Thing's more pop-oriented sound fit perfectly with the mainstream marketplace's own drift away from the prog-tinged seas that the band once sailed so masterfully. And with Smith's violin featuring prominently in the songs in some capacity, the band was able to provide a twist that many of its peers could not. The opening "Overdrive" was, and remains, one of the album's high points, a nice balance between the grit of Beacon's vocals and the bright pop of the music. Elsewhere, both "Black Eyed Queen" and the instrumental "Timpani for the Devil" allow Smith's violin to take center stage, with the latter then diving off into a free-form prog-tinged jam that belies the album's overall pop/rock sensibility. The CD reissue contains five bonus tracks -- live versions of "Timpani for the Devil" (which isn't all that different from the studio version), "Is to Love U," and "Man of Means," as well as the studio outtakes "A Peasant" and "The Bomb."