Sutherland Brothers & Quiver - Slipstream

Slipstream was a complete unknown for me when I found it in the bin. It looked interesting and the back cover was one of those weirdly ubiquitous band shots with floating bust shots of the band looking off into space were supposed to give a sense of mystery - or something. How would I know? I was 13 when this came out. The album cleaned up amazingly well.

I didn't initially recognize any of the names on the back cover. I had assumed based on the names that The Sutherland Brothers were Iain and Gavin, two Scottish lads (yeah, I went back a rewrote some of my initial meanderings after I looked the band up), and Quiver were drummer Willie Wilson, and guitarist Tim Renwick.

This is really tight soft rock and feels like a lot of other stuff from 1976 and was pretty enjoyable. As good as any of their contemporaries in my opinion. First time through nothing really rose above the rest in terms of standout tracks - that isn't meant to be a shot. The whole album is full of good songs. I'm sure another pass will have the cream rise to the top.

I did play the album a couple of times before looking them up. Apparently they did have some success in the UK with the song "Secrets" breaking into the top 40 singles, and the album broke into the top 50. I was actually surprised that the band released "Secrets" as a single, it's a good song, but having listened through a couple of times the song that actually really blew me away was the "The Prisoner" it's as close to a rocker as they album comes and has a great groove and killer guitar work. Then there's the album's closing instrumental "High Nights" that truly showcases Tim Renwick's guitar work (I wonder if Mark Knopfler heard this). I suppose I should call out his solo on "Something's Burning" (I have no idea what this song is about) is a pretty close second. It's interesting that their other single from the album "If I Could Have Your Loving" didn't chart as to me this was the better of the two. I have a feeling the more I play this the more things will start to stand out. I love albums like this.

Speaking of the guys from Quiver, Tim Renwick seemed to have a lot of credits from his work with Al Stewart on his big albums Year of the Cat and Time Passages. Not to mention his touring work with both Roger Waters, and David Gilmour. Pretty cool. Not to be left out drummer Willie Wilson played drums with Pink Floyd on The Wall tour as a surrogate Nick Mason, and on David Gilmour's first solo record he was the drummer. 

Side note, the year before in 1975 they released Reach for the Sky and had a pretty sizable hit in Europe with "Arms of Mary" (according to their Wikipedia page it went #1 in The Netherlands) a song I always thought was a Chilliwack song.Well, look at that, I'm going to have to go and pull out my Lights in the Valley album and read the credits. That's actually pretty cool.

All in all, a fun find and while I enjoyed pulling on the little threads to see where things led with members of the band - I really did find this a great surprise and a much better experience than I had expected. I can see myself putting this on from time to time it really is very good. As fate would have it, like a lot of bands from the 70s, they didn't make the transition out of the decade and by 1979 they had split and gone their separate ways.