Pitchfork

When Can reissued their catalog on CD in the late '90s, one album was quietly left behind. Out of Reach, from 1978, failed to make the cut. For 25 years, whenever this record has been reissued, it's been as a questionable semi-bootleg mastered from vinyl, and never endorsed by the band. Apparently, Can want to keep this one under rug swept. How bad can it be?

It's not a total loss. In fact, from one perspective, Out of Reach is an inspiration. Knowing that the godlike musical force that recorded the Tago Mago --> Ege Bamyasi --> Future Days troika could, only a few short years later, sink to this level of awfulness makes anything seem possible. Perhaps our lives are in a constant state of flux and any one of us might turn out a hero or a murderer, an exciting prospect, if you think about it. If Karoli, Liebezit and Schmidt can one day decide to transform their pristine artrock rhythm machine into a beered-up and sloppy Pablo Cruise in a jammy mood, maybe we can move equally far in the other direction.

You'll notice I made no mention of Holger Czukay-- that's 'cos he chose to be completely the fuck out of reach when the boys went into the studio to record. He came back for Inner Space the following year, but wasn't a member of Can at this point. Rosko Gee, who joined in 1977 for Saw Delight (along with percussionist and fellow Traffic alum Rebop Kwaku Baah) handles the bass duties. His parts aren't bad, actually, and Baah's percussion is sometimes the most interesting thing going, so there's no way to pin the blame on the Traffic guys. At this point in their career, Can just had no idea what kind of band they wanted to be.

They'd dabbled with dance rhythms for a little while by 1978, but Out of Reach finds them going deep into Latin disco rock territory. Now, understand something here: if someone described a band as "Can doing Latin disco rock," I'd normally be all over it. The fact that these masters of space and precision decided to explore genres known for thick layers and elasticity is a beautiful thing. It just turns out that Can are not very good at Latin disco rock. At all.

Actually, when it comes to the songwriting part of the equation, they're downright terrible. The attempt at a dance hit "Pauper's Daughter and I" has a tune so completely flat and lifeless, Rosko Gee's comically off-key vocals become a moot point. Honestly, it sounds like a song written by Eddy Grant's slow brother. Weak vocals also kill the otherwise-OK lite-rock fluff "Give Me No Roses", whose chorus contains Out of Reach's only successful hook.

If "Pauper's Daughter" is inept, "Like INOBE GOD" is just weird, a kind of Latinized Calypso groove with the addition of an Abba-like studio sheen, all set underneath what sounds like drunken, improvised chanting. If you can forget for a moment that this is actually Can, "Like INOBE GOD" could be enjoyably imagined as a curious a private-press recording of a late-70s wedding band from San Diego.

When they're not doing disco, Can displays what can only be described as overt Santana worship, and it's significant that Out of Reach is actually at its most satisfying when the band is in what Mark Prindle described as their "Cantana" mode. The high-energy "Serpentine" has some pretty cool percussion interplay between Liebezeit and Baah (on the disco cuts the mighty Jaki just sounds bored) and Karoli's wailing guitar in "November" has a sense of epic, widescreen drama. "Seven Days Awake" and "One More Day" are just bad 70s prog, "experimental" without any sense of playfulness or invention.

The label claims that this reissue of Out of Reach has been remastered, but at points it sounds suspiciously like a vinyl transfer. Certainly, in addition to being Can's nadir it's also a career low for engineer Conny Plank. The mix just sounds off in so many places, like pieces recorded at different times just don't match up. Still, the difficutly in finding Out of Reach-- up to this point-- proves Can are trustworthy: they knew what they were doing holding this back.