Listening to this self-titled debut album makes one think that Stray should have made it big but never did. This debut is among the very best debuts of all time, along with Montrose, Boston, Van Halen The Cars, Sex Pistols, Black Sabbath, King Crimson to name a few. The Led Zeppelin influence is quite obvious throughout the tracks which make up the original album release. Opener All in your Mind and In Reverse/Some Say are brilliant pieces of progressive hard rock both hitting 9 minutes each. The single edit of the former is also included here as one of the 5 bonus tracks while the latter is basically 2 great songs joined onto one track. Èlsewhere Time Machine is a great and marginally psychedelic hard rocker, Only what you can make It is a hard bluesy harmonica-imbued rocker while Around the world in 8 Days and Yesterday's Promises are 2 softer but very uplifting moments. Move On combines fast funk with sparse melodic guitar parts. The bonus tracks are fairly good as well but the original album is what I would call a lost classic which I've only recently discovered. I would also highly recommend their second album Suicide and the double Cd retrospective collection Time Machine Anthology 1970-1977 which includes at least 4 tracks from each of the 8 albums they released during that period. They are all well worth checking out.
The first (and to my ears the most original and consistent) Stray album now complemented by five bonus tracks which are all well-worth inclusion. Of these, there's a great cover of Fever Tree's "The Man Who Paints The Pictures", which although being the only non-original here doesn't sound out of place at all. Packaging-wise, there's an informative and nicely illustrated fold-out sleeve too. If you like early progressive rock that's powerful but not overblown, this is one you should have. Recommended.