Charts: US #32, AUS #46, NLD #39, NOR #22, UK #28.
Paul Weller had 22 of them. Lennon had a number nine one. McCartney had one of his mother Mary. David Crosby had one about a ‘Shadow Captain’ leading him astray. Ray Davies didn’t have any and wrote about his insomnia instead. No, we’re not talking about cakes or gold records here – we’re talking about dreams, one of the most common and useful songwriting ideas after love and romance. Grace Slick, she of the Jefferson Airplane and Starship, isn’t the kind of singer you usually associate with dreams and imagination (songs about real events and experiences have always been her strong point) but that's what makes this surreal, hazy yet bitey album all the more remarkable - easily the greatest and most essential purchase of her four solo albums. In one way this is in many ways her least dream-like album of all, full of stunning insights into her own life with the cold splash of trouble and tribulation, like the sober morning after an alcoholic binge and as tough as old boots. And yet there’s a magical, mystical quality to this album, which sounds – especially on the three-track tone poem on the second side – like the mystical side that's always been there in the background of the Airplane/Starship sound breaking through at last. A neat summation of that twilight time between sleep and awake, 'Dreams' is a forgotten and neglected work that sounds like the work of Grace's sub-conscious trying to find the right path and caught between scary realistic insight and the hazy realisation that there are still things to do and places to go.
(full version: alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-39-grace.html)