Search - Kansas :: Point Of Know Return

Point Of Know Return
Kansas
Point Of Know Return
Genres: Pop, Rock, Classic Rock
 
  •  Track Listings (12) - Disc #1

Kansas, Point Of Know Return

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Kansas
Title: Point Of Know Return
Members Wishing: 2
Total Copies: 0
Label: Sony
Original Release Date: 1/1/2002
Re-Release Date: 2/12/2002
Album Type: Original recording remastered, Extra tracks
Genres: Pop, Rock, Classic Rock
Styles: Progressive, Progressive Rock, Album-Oriented Rock (AOR), Arena Rock
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
Other Editions: Point Of Know Return
UPCs: 696998538726, 5099750603222

Synopsis

Album Description
Kansas, Point Of Know Return

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Member CD Reviews

Lisa B. from BOULDER CREEK, CA
Reviewed on 10/2/2009...
A trip down memory lane for me! The bonus tracks are live performances. Nice, but not a huge deal.

CD Reviews

The One that Started and Ended it All
Snow Leopard | Urbana, IL | 11/27/2002
(4 out of 5 stars)

"This, the most successful of Kansas' releases (yes, the one with "Dust in the Wind"), marked the beginning of the end of the band for me. One notes from the number of songs, relative to earlier albums, that shorter forms are becoming prevalent, and shorter forms from a prog rock band in the mid-70s meant, in practice, a swerve toward pop. Not even Yes was immune to this tendency.As "pop" goes, this is surely some of my favorite, but I didn't get into Kansas (I realized later) for the pop. "Point of Know Return" introduced me (like many others) to the band, but as I worked backward into their earlier music, I found that it was on "Masque", "Song for America" and "Leftoverture" that their music most spoke to me."Point of Know Return" (despite the kitsch of the title) is the kind of pop one could live with on the radio. "Paradox", as the sibling of "Point of Know Return", shows truly what a happy marriage of prog and pop Kansas could concoct. As a keyboardist myself, Walsh's "Spider" is a marvelously intricate thing, though much too short. "Portrait" (an homage to Einstein that I formerly mistook as an homage to Jesus) falls a bit flat on the album, but makes up for it 200-fold on "Two for the Show," where it is simply stunning. Side One (I date myself) ends with "Closet Chronicles", another of the compositional high points of Kerry Livgren's (and Walsh's) career. (It wasn't until years later that I found out this song is an homage to Howard Hughes.)Side Two opens with "Dust in the Wind"--originally a finger exercise piece that Kerry Livgren added lyrics too. There then follow two very unhappy monsters--both "Lightning's Hand" and "Sparks of the Tempest" fell flat for me, then and now. This was worrisome because previously all of the Kansas songs I'd not been fond of had been their more straightforward rockers. Here, we have two songs obviously in the prog-pop vein falling on their faces. Luckily, the album ends with two more genuine masterpieces, but that makes, in all, only three songs on the album I really want to listen to.Any Kansas playlist of their songs that genuinely expanded the compositional possibilities of rock (and it is in precisely this aspect that Kansas is most progressive) must contain "Hopelessly Human", "Nobody's Home", and "Closet Chronicles"--they are must hear, or must have, songs for anyone interested in pre-decline Kansas. The rest of the album, however, while superbly performed, as ever, just doesn't have the creative spark that earlier albums did.In high school, I would become nervous when a band I liked brought out a live album, because it often seemed to be a sign that the band couldn't come up with new material, or that a major change of direction was in the works. Kansas toured "Point of Know Return" extensively, and released a live album to document that. Two noble studio efforts followed, after which the decline became the collapse, and the Kansas I'd become a fan of ceased to be. "Point of Know Return," then, marks the beginning of the end; something that can be heard clearly in the music, especially if you know their earlier stuff."
70's Prog Rock
Thomas Magnum | NJ, USA | 02/26/2002
(4 out of 5 stars)

"Kansas was another in a line of 70's rock artists from the Midwest who enjoyed some chart success in the mid-70's to early 80's. But they had more in common with prog rockers like Yes, King Crimson and the others than with the earnest rock of Bob Seger and the like. Point Of No Return is the top album in their catalog and contains one of the staples of FM rock radio, the hauntingly beautiful "Dust In The Wind". But this album is more than a one-hit wonder. The title track opens the album with it's pulsating keyboards and other standout tracks include the Albert Einstein tribute, "Portrait (He Knew)", the Orwellian "Sparks Of The Tempest", another ballad "Nobody's Home", "The Spider" and the album's closer "Hopelessly Human". The album is remastered with two live tracks that are alright, but don't add much to the original album."