Kansas' third album, Masque, was released in the same year as Song for America, which is almost unheard of today. It was their third album in roughly a year and a half, but as the liner notes of Song for America (remastered) says, this was a particularly prolific time for Kerry Livgren as a songwriter.
The first song on the album is It Takes a Woman's Love (to Make a Man). This song is an upbeat opener but not a very strong start to the album. The band can't be faulted -- the reason for the song was their label was on them for a hit single, so this was their attempt to write one for their label: something that was "a little shorter than 12 minutes" that you could tap your feet to and was in the same time signature from beginning to end. Needless to say, it didn't become a hit. The song is just a basic love song about how a man isn't complete without the love of a woman. There's nothing really remarkable about the song. True to Kansas' nature, the great songs are the longer ones.
Up next, we have Two Cents' Worth. The lyrical content of this album tends to be much darker than on the previous albums, dealing with things like death and the inability to find meaning from life (which may have ultimately helped lead to Livgren's later conversion to Christianity). This particular song is upbeat and catchy (certainly better than the first track) and yet the singer talks about how he's been drinking because the seeming emptiness of life has gotten him down. He even seems to bring the listener into his discussion because in the last verse Walsh agrees we may think that he's wrong and he wishes he could see things our way.
Third comes Icarus (Borne on Wings of Steel). Like Song for America, this is another one of Kansas' signature songs that they still play live today. This song uses the myth of Icarus as an allegory. Icarus was given wings of feathers that were affixed to his body with wax. He was warned not to fly too close to the sun, yet his sense of freedom while he flew caused him to disregard this warning. He flew too close to the sun, the wax melted, and Icarus fell to his death. In this case, "borne on wings of steel" could likely refer to an airplane, and how flying gives a pilot a sense of freedom as he's able to leave the earth. If he lost the wings, the pilot would surely die just as without that sense of freedom Livgren would die, or he would at least feel lost. This song is one of the lengthier songs on this album and has some great musical moments, one of my favorites being the electric guitar adding a distorted melodic counterpoint to the violin, which is playing a descending eighth note figure. Kansas uses the string instruments, including one not usually found in rock bands, to great effect.
Coming up next we have All the World, which is, for the most part, a piano ballad similar to Lonely Wind from Kansas, except in this song the piano occasionally drops out for some heavier guitar or synth to take over. The end of the song has a rare a cappella section. There is also one musical misstep, in my opinion, which is incredibly rare on a Kansas recording. At the end before they move into the a cappella outro, rather than simply have Livgren stop the synth, they actually just fade it out in the mix and it sounds jarring. I wish they would have simply had Livgren stop playing altogether before coming having Walsh come back in with the vocals. But it's a relatively small nitpick in an otherwise strong ballad that breaks into a 7/4 instrumental section which is led by the synth, with brief periods of 3/4 between each musical phrase, leading the synth up to a new set of notes to play while the band plays a new progression of chords. As for the lyrics, it's the most optimistic song on the album. It's basically a petition to humanity to stop living selfishly and to live lives that forgive each other, leaving despair and loneliness behind.
After that we have Child of Innocence, another signature song that still gets played today. This one is primarily a straight-ahead rocker. This song returns to the theme of death and its inescapable reality. The "child of innocence" tends to think that it happens to others and not himself, but the subject of the song, the grim reaper (as is made obvious by lines such as "still you try to flee my blade", a reference to the scythe that the reaper is often imagined to carry), sings this song to the "child of innocence" to tell him to be prepared because he will die one day, too. It's something that happens to everyone and there's no escape.
The next song is It's You, which is another short love song. Listening to this song paired with the first one on this album, you start to realize why Kansas should avoid writing love songs. It's clearly not their forte. This is by far the weakest song on the album, and is trite and cliche, lyrically (e.g. rhyming "Oh, it's you" with "Oh, I'm blue", and other trite lines like "I need you 'cause my life's turning grey"). Definitely one to skip unless you can tolerate it for its short length. It's probably the shortest song ever written by Kansas that wasn't an instrumental.
Mysteries and Mayhem comes up next. This song is about a nightmare the protagonist has regarding a hooded figure in black calling his name, which likely represents death (based on the themes represented throughout this album as a whole). He tries to run from this figure but can't, his legs seemingly much heavier than they usually are (as if they're made of lead). This song is pretty much a straight-ahead rocker with a musical break during the middle which is driven by the distorted electric guitar.
The Pinnacle is the final song, and Mysteries and Mayhem leads right into it. Mysteries and Mayhem allows the song to fade, and then The Pinnacle starts with the same melody that Mysteries and Mayhem ended with, which indicates that they probably envisioned it as the second part of the prior song. I don't know if it was just a limitation of the recording equipment where they couldn't connect the two songs and split it into two tracks or if it was intentional, but based on the same melody, plus the lyric near the end of the prior song, "Mysteries and mayhem from the pinnacle I see", it's pretty strongly implied that The Pinnacle picks up where Mysteries and Mayhem left off. Plus, in both songs, the protagonist sings about bearing "the mark of Cain", which is a Biblical reference to the mark Cain received after murdering his brother, Abel, which God gave to him as an act of mercy, a sign showing that whoever would kill Cain, vengeance would be taken upon that person sevenfold. Most of the songs on this album are great, but of all the songs, this is my absolute favorite. It continues the theme of death, and even the sense of frustration that Livgren felt in his search for religious truth, which he thought unattainable. In his book Seeds of Change, Livgren says he was moving from one philosophy to another and none filled the emptiness he felt. The "jester's promenade" he mentions in the song refers to the "promenade of human religions and philosophies," which started to seem like some insipid joke. This song is very complex musically, and gives almost a sort of medieval feeling, using imagery you usually see in fantasy stories of "the hero" who "breaks his blade" in "conquer[ing] demon foes" while standing "where no goes". It clocks in at almost 10 minutes long but is a marvelous composition from start to finish, and the glorious ending of the song gives me goosebumps every time.
The success of this album, and Kansas' first two albums, was most definitely due to the success of their next two albums. Once the next album was released to the public, the lead single became a smash hit and even fans of rock music who weren't necessarily musicians became enamored of this band.
Album: Masque (1975)
Band: Kansas
Phil Ehart -- drums, moog drum, assorted percussion
Dave Hope -- bass guitar
Kerry Livgren -- lead and rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, clavinet, moog and ARP synthesizers
Robby Steinhardt -- violin and vocals
Steve Walsh -- organ, piano, clavinet, moog synthesizer, congas, and vocals
Rich Williams -- lead and rhythm guitar
Track list:
1. *It Takes a Woman's Love (to Make a Man) (3:09) -- Walsh (saxophone by Lon Price)
2. Two Cents' Worth (3:09) -- Livgren, Walsh
3. Icarus (Borne on Wings of Steel) (6:02) -- Livgren
4. All the World (7:12) -- Walsh, Steinhardt
5. Child of Innocence (4:34) -- Livgren
6. It's You (2:33) -- Walsh
7. Mysteries and Mayhem (4:18) -- Walsh, Livgren
8. The Pinnacle (9:34) -- Livgren
* denotes a single
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