Here's what the 1983 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide had to say about Procol Harum...
A Whiter Shade of Pale (originally released on Deram as Procol Harum) presented an imaginative, realized, and (for 1967) wholly unlikely combination of styles: Gary Brooker's excellent vocals echoed blues wailers like ray Charles; Robin Trower's thickly distorted guitar recalled Eric Clapton's work with Cream; Matthew Fisher's cathedral organ borrowed from the seriousness, precision, and mastery of classical composers; B.J. Wilson was a nimble and individual drummer; Keith Reid's lyrics owed much to Dylan's Blonde on Blonde period. The constant combination of piano (Brooker) and organ was largely unknown in rock at the time. Shine On Brightly continued this approach and included a long, shifting, multi-segmented magnum opus, one of rock's first.
Less a one-man show for Brooker (who had been writing almost all the music), A Salty Dog took many chances and succeeded brilliantly: grand orchestrations, subtle sound effects, quaint and someowhat rustic instruments, Fisher's gentle vocals, and ruder and more paired-down blues variations.
Fisher then quit and was replaced by Chris Copping (who doubled on bass), an adequate player but one without his predecessor's imagination. Home thus lacked the maturity, sweep, and variety of earlier Procol, but did press further into harder rocking territory.
Broken Barricades erratically extended the heavier direction, failing twice with ragged, simplistic, and poorly sung cuts from Trower. Elsewhere, the group was stale or long-winded, despite the prettiness of the title track, at the finish of which Wilson turns in someof his finest signatures.
Trower then left, and his successors have offered competent but not excellent similarity. The live LP had no new songs, and only smoothed out and drained the old arrangements with tasteful but sterilizing orchestration -- too polite an approach for what was finally a rock group, whatever its obvious classical inspirations.
The Best assembled superior tracks from the first six albums, as well as some fine B sides and never-released tracks.
Grand Hotel had Brooker back in control, but except for Wilson, it's a faceless cast, and the record was only a pale reflection of the band's past. But Exotic Birds and Fruit nearly matched the best of the Fisher/Trower days with its energetic paces, gentle melodies, gritty engineering, and unabashed confidence. Given inspiring material, Procol showed it could still rise to the occasion.
Procol's Ninth (actually their tenth, including The Best) tried new tacks with some success: production from Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller all buut ignored the classical influence but kept the band's basic sound intact. A horn-enlivened rock & roll songworked, as did an organ simulating bagpipes, but the Beatle's "Eaight Days a Week" didn't.
Something Magic offered unconvincing and disjointed dollops of previous stylings; side two was a lengthly, boringly narrated indulgence.
-- Charley Walters