Santana completely passed me by in the 1970s. I never did look to USA for musical enlightenment and they were never really cool. Even when World Music became a thing, most 1970s stuff, especially if tainted with Europe/USA didn’t feature.
I think I saw this double (it’s in a two pack with Santana III ) in a sale and thought it was something I should check out. I’m going to treat these multipacks as separate albums in this exercise, so it’s just Abraxus here.
Lovely start - Singing Winds Crying Beasts has a touch of the Doors about it, then a lacklustre cover of Peter Green’s Black Magic Woman is rescued by some great guitar work on Gypsy Woman. But from there on, it seems to be a series of Latin beats, with a couple of minutes of Carlos Santana’s guitar noodling. There’s a change of sound with Gregg Rolie’s completely disposable rock song, Mother’s Daughter, and we slow down with the U.K. hit, instrumental Samba Pa Ti. Back up again with another Rolie effort Hope You’re Feeling Better - competent, but nothing inspiring - before the original album ends with the Latin percussion number, El Nicoya. The CD has three more tracks, two of which are live versions of album tracks, while the third Toussaint L’Overture is a lively guitar/ Hammond organ romp.
3* - an interesting listen, worth a revisit, but the Latin sound isn’t truly my thing
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