The quintessential 70's rock album.
If you're a fan of 70's guitar-driven rock, you must have this album in your collection. "Day of the Eagle", Little Bit of Sympathy" & "Too Rolling Stoned" are standards of the genre. I'm typically either disappointed or enthralled by Trower's work, but this album goes beyond that. This is one of those iconic rock LP's like Dark Side Of The Moon, Black Sabbath, Tres Hombres or Who's Next that every classic rock fan must have. And the Bonus tracks are just that: "BONUS!"
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One of Top 10 Rock CDs of All Time
Robin Trower and his band are astonishing on "Bridge of Sighs" and also "For Earth Below/Live" which is very similar but has poorer sound quality. They really established the best, and clear early 70s persona with their music, that I have heard from any band.
They are also the best 3-piece rock band ever: better than Jimi Hendrix Experience, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Cream, and Rush. Guitarist Trower is incredibly virtuosic and present and sensible in these songs, indeed he reminds listeners of Hendrix himself, in his style, although Trower often doesn't emotionally move me like my three favorite guitarists, Paul Kossoff primarily of Free, Martin Pugh primarily of Steamhammer, and Les Harvey of Stone The Crows.
James Dewar is the highlight of these recordings. What an incredible voice he had as lead singer, and what a presence, along with his fine bass playing! I'll take Dewar over fellow lead singer/bassist Jack Bruce any day (incidentally Bruce did later team up with Trower on some of his records), and among bands I'm familiar with, only Steve Kilbey of The Church rivals Dewar in astonishing greatness as a singer/bassist(but even Kilbey perhaps doesn't match Dewar on overall coolness in the band and cool stage presence).
Dewar is so great, that even with the wonderful lead singer Maggie Bell and lead guitarist Les Harvey still in the fold, Stone The Crows was nothing after Dewar and organist John McGinnis simultaneously left the band, Dewar to join Robin Trower. I can't even listen to STC's next album after the Dewar/McGinnis departure, and the last one to include Harvey, called "Teenage Licks". That album is awful in comparison to STC's first 2 releases featuring also Dewar and McGinnis; I can't even listen to "Teenage Licks." So Dewar really means something in any band; it is a tragedy on the level of the rock world losing Paul Kossoff after his experiments with illegal drugs, that a hospital error with anesthesia caused significant brain damage to Dewar in the late '80s and he needed constant care and was unproductive after that until his also untimely death in the early 2000s.
Finally, drummer Reg Isidore is simply remarkable on "Bridge of Sighs" and the first BBC Session of the two sessions comprising this disc's bonus tracks. Bill Lordan, who replaced Isidore starting with the "For Earth Below/Live" CDs, is very adequate but not quite as special and great in my opinion, as was Isidore.
This music is just so passionate, reserved, cool, '70s but with universal appeal, permeated with the presence of the steady but virtuosic Robin Trower's guitar, and most especially a unique combination of obvious secularism with tremendous spirituality in the lyrics, that you can't go wrong in buying the best of the Dewar/Trower combinaton albums, "Bridge Of Sighs", "For Earth Below", and "Live".
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