Honestly, I can easily understand a situation in which somebody listened to the start of this album for the first time and instantly decided it was one of their favorite albums ever even before bothering to listen to the rest of it, because the first few tracks are just that good. The opening "I Wanna Be Adored," after 40 seconds or so of slowly building guitar noise that's not quite like anything I can think of in another context, starts congealing into the song itself, which is ultimately a set of anthemic and atmospheric guitar lines (with a GREAT tone) over a throbbing bassline while Ian contributes an almost mantra-ish built around the phrases "I don't have to sell my soul/He's already in me" and "I wanna be adored." It doesn't sound like much on paper, but you really need to hear this one if you haven't; Brown sounds fine, but Squire squeezes way more out of this song than it should probably be able to yield thanks to the power of his guitar. Even better is the following "She Bangs the Drums," which features a total winner of a bassline, an insanely catchy vocal melody in the verses and the chorus, a great subtle bit of piano tucked underneath the sound for extra oomph, and an incredible guitar part that sorta channels The Byrds on "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" but actually manages to transcend its influence in all of the various updates that Squire brings (in terms of echo, phrasing and other aspects that allow Squire to claim this song as thoroughly his own). The "Elephant Stone" single on the US version is a little weaker, but it's still decently interesting power pop with intriguing drumming under it, and it doesn't mess up the flow of the album too badly in its 3 minutes. Far surpassing it is "Waterfall," the second major highlight of the album, and the first one to really grab me hard. The cross of that rolling distorted guitar line (with such a warm and disarming tone), that oddly bopping rhythm, that glorious chorus of "She'll carry on through it all *pause* she's a waterfall," and the ecstatic coda in the last couple of minutes make for a glorious experience.

If the album held onto the intensity of the first few tracks, I'd be ready to get in line to call it a classic ... but it doesn't. Ok, so "Don't Stop" is an interesting track to have immediately after "Waterfall," since it takes the backing instrumental of "Waterfall," plays it backwards, goes all 5th Dimension-era Byrds with the guitars on top of it, and throws on some new vocals. The next four songs (well, the next five if I count "Elizabeth My Dear," which is just new lyrics on top of "Scarborough Fair" for a minute), though, are all decent but make me rather droopy when they're all strung together. "Bye Bye Badman" only gets really interesting for me when it momentarily speeds up in the lead-up to singing the title; "(Song for My) Sugar Spun Sister" taps into imitating The Byrds again but with diminished returns (it's decent electrified folk rock but has never struck me as more); "Made of Stone" has an oddly dark initial guitar sound but turns into another decent Byrds update; "Shoot You Down" has some nice bits of dreamy Axis: Bold as Love-ish guitar added to a song that has an odd late 60s Beach Boys tinge, but it kinda passes me by otherwise.

Fortunately, just as the album is about to fade out of my mind even as I'm listening to it, the band is able to rouse me with the opening guitar line of "This is the One," and all is made well again. The song strikes me as somewhat in the mold of "I Wanna be Adored," not in terms of specific details but rather in how it's anthemic number built around big (but not at all overbearing) guitars working around the title being sung in a mantra-ish manner. The build from the quiet repetitions of the title to the louder repetitions strike me as especially inspired, and all of the various guitar sounds thrown on top of the climactic proclaiming of the title in the last minute add nice variety to what could potentially get a little monotonous. "I am the Resurrection" follows, and while the title and chorus is so over-the-top that I can't help but roll my eyes a bit at it, the song itself (including the chorus) is a memorable bit of anthem-making, but what really makes it a classic is the 4-minute instrumental passage that caps it off. Mani and Reni lay down an unstoppable funk-rock groove, and Squire brings out every hard-rock and funk-rock trick he has available to him (before going in an anthemic direction more typical of earlier material on the album) to make this passage nearly the equal of analogous passages from "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" or "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" or the like. And finally, "Fools Gold" is a great bit of white-boy funk that far transcends the insulting tone usually associated with that term; the mix of Squire's wah-wah and that rhythm section is a joy to take in.

Ok, so maybe the album isn't quite at a classic level, but about half of it is, and there's not really anything wrong in particular with the rest, so it's ultimately one that I feel inclined to rate pretty favorably. If you can get beyond the legitimate reasons for feeling a little anti-hyped about it (boy that's a lot of Byrds-aping) and focus on all of the good parts, you'll enjoy this plenty.

Largely because it was the album at the center of the band's collapse, Second Coming ended up becoming more infamous as a symbol than it probably deserved as an actual album; it was derided by some fans of the first album for not drawing upon the sound and approach that brought them success, but it was also pointed to by other observers as a quintessential example of a band collapsing under the weight of its success and excess (it should be noted that many of these observers were journalists who were angry at the band for having little desire to answer the banalities directed their way in interviews, and who thus took some glee at the idea of making one of their albums seem pretty bad). As somebody who heard this album long after the debut (and the debut long after the band had dissolved), though, it's hard for me to buy into this negativity. The album is certainly weaker than the debut, for sure; much of this certainly comes from the shift in songwriting responsibilities, from Brown and Squire sharing credits on everything in the first album to Squire having sole credit for most of the material on this album (with a smattering of secondary credits here and there). The album's general approach has shifted from a fairly coherent update on 60s pop aesthetics (it didn't make for a diverse listen, and it got a little boring here and there, but showed a band that had figured out what it wanted to sound like) into a much messier collection of material inspired by 70s rock, often extensively centering around Squire's guitar playing. There are, of course, some lighter pop songs; "Ten Storey Love Song" goes from a brief chaotic intro into an updated version of The Hollies, and "How Do You Sleep" could easily have passed for something from the debut with a little more gloss in the production and a less worn vocal from Brown (it should be noted that Brown, through all of this album, sounds like he's had a hard five years since the debut, and I have to imagine this is part of the reason the album is so often criticized). The rest, though, tends to lean in a dirty, decadent direction, often bringing in elements of hard rock, though sometimes not ("Day Break" is a long funky jam with Squire doing his best to save things, and "Begging You" is pretty generic 90s dance rock with lots of Squire noise piled on top). This album's approach doesn't make for a better listen than the debut, but it's definitely an interesting listen, and Squire is so talented and active that he's able to make much of this album work on his own.

The album starts with more than 4 minutes of "epic" introduction, with running water side-by-side with all sorts of hellish guitar noises and other stuff, and it's a bit excessive, but it's forgivable given how great the main part of "Breaking Into Heaven" is. It's basically another extended (6:45 this time, plus the 4:30 introduction, for a grand total of more than 11 minutes) funk jam along the lines of "Fools Gold," but it's even better than that one was, with Squire ripping it up and the rhythm section sounding every bit as hypnotic as they did on the debut. Then it's off to "Driving South" for a Led Zeppelin-ish or Aerosmith-ish blues jam based around great riffs (Squire is awesome); it's derivative as hell, but it's not more derivative than all of those Byrds homages were on the debut, and the track sucks me in something fierce. Other guitar spotlights on the album include "Good Times" (Brown doesn't sound convincing when singing Blues or 60s-style R&B, but Squire sure does!), "Tears" (where the band manages to crib "Stairway to Heaven" as closely as a band can without actually copying any notes from it, and where Squire's playing gets over-the-top but is still enjoyable) and "Love Spreads" (killer blues rock with a killer tone), all of which makes me think the band might have missed its true calling.

There are some other tracks, but they're not all worth covering (the hypnotic-into-anthemic acoustic pop of "Tightrope" is rather nice), and the secret bonus track is a total waste of time. In total, though, this is definitely an album I like a good deal more than not, and if I wouldn't recommend it as much as the debut, I would at least recommend it 80% as much as I would the debut. It might have been fun to see where the band would have gone after this, but there are worse ways to end a career.