Point of Know Return

Kansas’s fifth album contains their second-biggest hit, “Dust In The Wind,” but that mostly acoustic ballad is highly unrepresentative of the album as a whole. The opening title track, which bludgeons the listener with keyboard and violin fanfares over thundering drums, is what they were always really about. “Paradox” and the instrumental “The Spider” keep up the momentum, before the overtly Genesis-esque “Portrait (He Knew)” kicks in. The song is about Albert Einstein, but it’s written vaguely enough that it could be a spiritual/religious allegory. (Kansas often pulled that “wait, are these guys…Christian rock?” bait-and-switch; see also “Sparks Of The Tempest,” which marries thudding political protest to a vague longing for…something.) Even listeners who didn’t care about messages could get with the big riffs and bulldozer-boogie rhythms, though. Point Of Know Return is prime ’70s rawk, ambitious but grounded enough to please stoners and prog dorks equally.