Bursting at the Seams by Strawbs

Bursting at the Seams, the fifth studio album by Strawbs, is the record where Dave Cousins' band hit its commercial peak, following Grave New World onto A&M. It was the first without Tony Hooper, who had founded the group with Cousins back when they were a bluegrass duo called the Strawberry Hill Boys, and the first with Dave Lambert aboard, alongside John Ford, Richard Hudson and Blue Weaver.

The sound is folk rock stretched toward the grandeur of prog, with Cousins, the leader and chief songwriter, steering the band ever further from its acoustic roots. It holds their two most successful singles, the rousing "Part of the Union" and the hymn-like "Lay Down", which reached No. 2 and No. 12 in Britain, and the album itself climbed to No. 2 on the UK chart and No. 65 in Canada.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.