“They’d often taken leaps into more powerful, aggressive album tracks at odds with their hit singles. Then they went even further”: When a 70s bubblegum pop quartet surprised fans by releasing a prog album

The Sweet pose around a mixing desk in a rehearsal room in 1978. L-R Steve Priest, Mick Tucker, Andy Scott, Brian Connolly. (Photo by Dick Barnatt/Redferns)

(Image credit: Getty Images)

In 2018 Prog argued that glam pop giants Sweet had signalled their intention to become something much more experimental with the release of 1978 album Level Headed, which owed more to 10cc and Supertramp than their previous output. We can only imagine what might have followed if the line-up had staye together.

Sweet, eh? The acknowledged masters of 70s bubblegum pop rock. But on their sixth album, the band were shifting into musical areas which had perhaps been regarded as off limits to them before.

Not that the quartet had ever been prepared to stand still; they’d often taken leaps into a more powerful, aggressive rock style on album tracks, which were often at odds with their charting singles.

In 1978 – in what would prove to be the final release from the classic line-up – Sweet went even further. They brought in psychedelic twists and daubs of progression to augment the melodic nature of the music.

It meant Level Headed was an ambitious project, which stretched the members’ talents in a way that had never been done previously. They led off by taking the listener on an expected journey, offering only glimpses of what was to come.

Anthem No I (Lady Of The Lake) - YouTube

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So Love Is Like Oxygen, their last big hit, mingled an opaque psychedelic intricacy with an obvious pop rock tune. It’s interesting to note, though, that the album version is a lot longer and has more depth that the edited single.

The same can be said of California Nights and Strong Love, both of which offer the semblance of being prime style Sweet, yet also have a slightly bolder approach. This is developed with Silverbird, which allows itself to get lost in a swirl reminiscent of Jefferson Airplane.

But it’s on Anthem No 1 (Lady Of The Lake) and Anthem No II where things really depart from the norm. Here the band go for what can only be described as an art rock indulgence, with the articulate guitar work from Andy Scott complemented by classical style keyboard and string sections. It says much of how creative the band could be that it never sounds forced.

The self-produced Level Headed represents Sweet as you’d never heard them before, going for a more introspective and adventurous path. They weren’t prepared to give fans what they perhaps expected, but instead took musical leaps off the edge of the cliff.

It would be foolhardy and misleading to suggest the band fully embraced progressive music. But on Level Headed they moved a lot closer to 10cc and Supertramp than anybody might have expected.

The album wasn’t a commercial success, but now stands as arguably the most fascinating and challenging release of their career. Who knows what might have been achieved if vocalist Brian Connolly hadn’t left in 1979 and the quartet heard here had stayed together? Level Headed shows the incredibly potential Sweet had as they deliberately abandoned playing safe.

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.

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