Atlantic Studios in New York. Tom Dowd producing — the man behind Aretha, Ray Charles and the Allmans. Cissy Houston and the Sweet Inspirations singing backing vocals. On paper it is a dream. In practice it is the most disliked record Wishbone Ash ever made, the one their own audience calls the nadir, and their lowest chart placing to that point. It is also, if you listen to it now without the 1976 expectations attached, a considerably more interesting album than its reputation suggests.

The short version

Locked In is Wishbone Ash’s sixth studio album, released on 12 March 1976 — on Atlantic in North America and MCA everywhere else, the only Atlantic record they ever made. Sessions began at Atlantic Studios in New York in late 1975 with Tom Dowd producing, Geoff Daking recording, and Bobby Warner and Jay Borden mixing. The band is Andy Powell and Laurie Wisefield on guitars, Martin Turner on bass and vocals, Steve Upton on drums — the second album with Wisefield, who replaced Ted Turner in 1974. Peter Wood plays session keyboards. Eight tracks, thirty-seven minutes. It reached number 36 in Britain, their worst placing at the time.

Tom Dowd, Atlantic, and a direction nobody expected

Dowd was a twenty-five-year studio veteran with a southern soul and jazz background, and that is precisely what he brought — which is also the entire case for the prosecution. Critics have argued for fifty years that he steered a British twin-guitar band into swamp rock and R&B, a direction that suited neither their instincts nor their audience. The band went along with it: they had moved their base to America, they wanted an American breakthrough, and this was the producer to get it. The other structural change is quieter but tells you as much. This is the first Wishbone Ash album where original songs are not all credited to the whole group — four of the eight go to one or two members. The collective that wrote Argus in a room together had started keeping separate accounts.

The sound

Soulful, funky, American and mid-paced, with organ where the guitars used to be and backing choirs on several tracks. Cissy Houston and Sylvia Shemwell of the Sweet Inspirations sing on two of them, which is a sentence no other Wishbone Ash album can produce. Wisefield takes far more of the lead vocals than before. There is a talk box on the opener — not a vocoder, a distinction their own fans have been correcting each other about for decades. The twin leads are still in there and still capable, but they are decoration on somebody else’s record. The sleeve has New York behind them, which is honest of it. This is a British band doing American music, competently, and the gap between competent and convincing is where the whole argument lives.

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The songs

Rest in Peace opens as the most recognisably Wishbone Ash thing here, talk box and all, and it has a long guitar play-out that reminds you what this band is. No Water in the Well is Wisefield’s, funky and keyboard-led. Moonshine goes country rock. She Was My Best Friend is Martin Turner’s, slow and mournful, and it carries the Sweet Inspirations behind it; opinions on it range from the album’s emotional centre to unlistenable, with very little in between. It Started in Heaven, by Wisefield and Upton, is the other one with the choir. Half Past Lovin’ is a funky blues that has been called the worst song they ever recorded and has also been singled out by other listeners as a highlight — the bass on it genuinely swings. Trust in You has melodic, talkative guitar and a chorus that could have come off There’s the Rub. Say Goodbye, by Turner and Wisefield, closes it.

Reception and legacy

Savaged then and savaged since; among the band’s own following it is routinely named the low point of the catalogue, with the blame laid squarely on Dowd. But the reassessment has been under way for a while. The 2018 box set prompted at least one critic to file it as a yacht-rocking guilty pleasure rather than an atrocity, and there is a steady trickle of listeners who sold their copy in 1976, found the songs stuck with them anyway, and bought it back. Both readings are defensible; what neither camp disputes is that this is not the band you came for. Seven months later they went to the Alberts and made New England, which charted higher and steadied the ship, and which named itself after the part of America they were now living in.

The verdict

For completists, and for the curious — not a starting point, and Argus is four years and a universe behind it. If you do come, come without expecting Wishbone Ash and you will find a decent mid-seventies American soul-rock record made by four good musicians and a great producer who wanted different things. Play Rest in Peace, which is the bridge back to the band you know. Then Trust in You for the guitars. Then She Was My Best Friend, and decide for yourself which side of that argument you are on. Half the audience of this band would tell you not to bother at all. The other half would tell you they were wrong for forty years, which is at least an interesting thing for an album to provoke.

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