Pitchfork

For all his scholarly quips and curmudgeonly demeanor, King Crimson founder and guitarist Robert Fripp has gone to great pains to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground. Unlike some of his first-generation progressive rock peers of the late 60s and early 70s, he never allowed his band to leap into the abyss of new age fantasy or wanky tech-pomp. At all points during Crimson's many-membered lifetime, Fripp has been the model of humble workmanship: You can usually count on him to 1) hate the music business, 2) refuse to rest on his laurels, and 3) practice his guitar. It makes sense that he wouldn't expect much pleasure from record sales or a cult of fans as obsessive as they come-- after all, it's the musician's job to strive for excellence in the face of commerce and compromise.

And it shouldn't bother him that during the course of his 35-year, single-minded crusade he's left himself on a desert island with only his comfortable legion of fans and bandmates to keep him company. It's been a few years since he was painting London red with Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel and David Bowie, and these days Fripp mostly celebrates advanced middle age with his wife, English garden and the latest version of his storied band. Sure, his records sound more than a little like shadows (albeit of the highest quality) of his classic past efforts, but it's not as if rock history is littered with grandfatherly figures re-inventing the wheel. "Hey man, lay off Fripp-- King Crimson is the best prog band ever!" I know it is, I do; I really wish I could get past the irony of a progressive rock band being unable to progress.

The Power to Believe is the band's 13th studio LP, and the third featuring the current lineup of Fripp, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto. Last year, the buzz about this record was that it was going to be the result of Crimson's ear to xFC-metal, and having toured with Tool-- in fact, the working title was Nuovo Metal. Last year's Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With EP offered some preliminary tastes of this direction, as did the deluge of recent live releases, including 2001's Level Five, and the Projekcts albums. I'm happy to report that Power is much less awful than that EP, and more consistently interesting than the sprawling live CDs. That said, there is an omnipresent residue of stagnancy that has covered just about everything King Crimson have released since 1995's Thrak, and this record is no less stained.

Fans of the mid-1970s lineup should find the most to enjoy on Power to Believe, as it not only finds King Crimson playing with muscular aggression similar to that period, but also revisiting the group improvisation that set them so far apart from other 70s prog bands. The title suite-- arranged in four movements; Fripp still loves the symphonic form-- begins and ends as a sort-of haiku verse penned by Belew, but the middle sections are reminiscent of the lengthy excursions from 1992's excellent Great Deceiver box set, of their 1973-74 tours. Exotic percussion (Jaime Muir, where are you?), floating Frippertronics, and fretless basslines (ahem, "Warr guitar") flesh out what seems like very familiar territory.

It is, of course, a credit to the band that they manage to retain the adventurous spirit of past incarnations, whether or not the end result is a tad stale-- Fripp's solo on "Part III" is pretty cool, after all, and the driving, minimal "Dangerous Curves" reminds me of "The Talking Drum" from Larks' Tongues, right down to the repeating bassline and ending on a wall of dissonant noise.

The band also throws a few bones to modern electronic music with "Level Five" and "Elektronic". The former tune is a fairly standard instrumental in the style of "Red", or more recently, "Thrak"-- though not quite as ferocious as either. However, Mastelotto's drum parts are injected with occasional glitch and Aphex-style stutter, giving the groove a somewhat refreshing (at least for anyone who never heard Aphex) wrinkle. The latter tune fares better, if only because the efforts don't seem like hopeless catch-up exercises. Oh wait, yes they do, because I'm pretty sure those Prodigy beats were stale about six months into 1997. Anyway, the tunes are right on time for Crimson fans, and if you wanted to, you could easily tune out the barely there computer touches.

There are moments without many redeeming qualities: The dad-joke "Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With" survives in full form from its self-titled EP here, and alas, is still embarrassingly out of touch. Likewise, "Facts of Life" features just as clueless a take on metal as the former tune, and Belew's ridiculously holier-than-thou lyrics detailing how "some of us build, and some of us teach" (he forgot the ones who provide public service announcements), and how "nobody knows what happens when you die." These things are "fact[s] of life," he says. Now, if he could only throw in a verse about how "the president thinks he's so smart, but you know what, he's not," we'd be set.

Despite all the unfortunate narrative (which, in itself is reminiscent of most Crimson records) and quaint "updates" in sound, this record should please quite a few fans. Even as my brain tells me that the Crimson well is probably dry, my fist wants to pump during the breakdowns in "Level Five". Fact is, very few bands have a command of their own voice as well as Fripp and Crimson, and I suppose when you've been at it for so long, mastery comes with the territory. I can admit to feeling some of that old Crim magic a few times during Power to Believe, but would be kidding myself if I thought it was as potent a spell as their adventures of yore.