Kinks - 'Face to Face' (Pye/Zafiro)

When I lived in Scotland, someone once drunkenly ranted at me about how annoying they found the American music hipster fascination with the Kinks, particularly their more English-empire themed material. This may have been a case of a Scottish guy feeling irritated with something so English as to be almost like musical imperialism, so I understood it, but there's also the fact that local Glaswegians were buying Trinidad & Tobago football jerseys en masse that year, since they faced England in the same World Cup group, and that's when it just gets silly. The English have a lot of crimes to answer for, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson merely being the latest, but things are a bit more complicated than that, so I took with a grain of salt (though I perhaps slightly dialled back my outward passion for this music after that conversation). It's been a few years since I fell into a Kinks hole, but this section of the blog-project comes at a nice time, because these songs are brightening up the dark end of this winter, or at least they are tonight. Face to Face is the one where the truly GREAT run starts - I had all of them between this and Arthur on the Castle reissue CDs, which featured all of the right bonus tracks in the right places. And to be honest, I'd put the Face to Face - Muswell Hillbillies era up against any of the other unfuckwithable streaks in rock music history; maybe it doesn't quite equal, say, Propeller through Under the Bushes in terms of total amazement, but it comes close. And like GbV then, there's a plethora of non-album material that turned up over the years in various places (compilations, singles, etc.) which are part of the complete picture. So used to the CD am I that this LP feels a bit weak without 'This is Where I Belong' and 'I'm Not Like Everybody Else', but that's ok, cause I still have the CD (we're just way out of sync between the two blogs, sorry!). Comparing this to Kinda Kinks just a few albums back, the difference is remarkable - where the Kinks in 1965 were a singles band who padded out their album with some filler, just a year later they're creating near-complete statements of purpose. Even the lighter fare here - 'Holiday in Waikiki', 'Party Line', 'Session Man' - are great songs. There's a sense of drama that doesn't compromise the catchiness - 'Rainy Day in June' is positively epic, but when the chorus comes in, it's a slow and addictive march that shows messrs. Quaife and Avery as being so much more than just backing musicians. Track two, 'Rosy Won't You Please Come Home', is a work of heartbreaking beauty, though maybe I'm just a sucker for these family dramas. 'House in the Country' doesn't quite reach Village Green levels of pastoral nostalgia, but the seeds are sown. It's all bound up in Shel Talmy production again, so the guitars ring, the drums quake, and everything is more psychedelic than you might remember it being, with flourishes of harpsichord on 'Rosy', musique concrete overlays on 'Rainy Day', and Dave Davies' hard guitar edge starting to emerge (listen to that crazy tone on 'Waikiki'!).  No, it's not their best album, but it's undeniably solid throughout.

Roy Harper - 'Folkjokeopus' (World Pacific)

I wish I had the UK edition of this because the cover is nicer - this has a circusy typeface that jars against the moody, moustache-heavy photo on the cover here. Actually, Harper looks like Howard Moon from The Mighty Boosh on this sleeve, though the sounds herein are far from the scat-jazz stylings the fictitious Mr. Moon would endorse. This is Harper's third album and I'm sad not to own the second as Come Out Fighting Genghis Smith is a fantastic album where the Harper sound begins to come together and emerge as a distinct vision, rather than a 'product of the times'. But Folkjokeopus ain't bad at all, probably one of my overall favourites, and Shel Talmy's production is really evident - generally a good thing, except that  some of the rockers start to sound the same. The unnamed rhythm section has a real boogie-woogie bass player and several songs' reliance on minor key strummed acoustic chords before a major resolution leads to a samey feeling throughout. One would be forgiven for confusing snippets of 'Seargent Sunshine', 'Zaney Janey' and 'She's the One', although they are pretty different compositions. The first two are fun and pleasant pop songs, one the perfect album opener and the second perhaps Harper's counterpoint to Nick Drake's 'Hazy Jane' - I like to think they are about the same woman and reflect the dispositions of the songwriters and how they interpreted her. 'She's The One' is the all-time most-played Harper cut in this house. My vinyl is worn a bit thin here, but it sounds great, and I just want to keep listening to it over and over. A paen of jealous appreciation to a friend unhappy with his marriage, it seethes with fantasy, passion and life, even with cryptic lyrics I've struggled with for a decade ('She's the one who buys the comics, drops the kids and knows the con', but maybe I'm trying to read in too much). It's major hook ('Ah how can any man talk like you / with a wonderful wife like yours?') is impossible to not sing along to, bursting with such exuberance. The momentum keeps this going and it doesn't even begin to wear out its welcome despite it's seven minute length - but if we want to talk about duration, well this is the album with 'McGoohan's Blues', the 17 minute epic loosely inspired by The Prisoner. As length Harper compositions go, this is one of the strongest, built mostly around a stark, tinny strum and his voice. This is borderline conspiracy theory soliloquising, with the Prisoner imagery slowly fading into a full-fledged psychedelic mess (rainbows, toadstools, silver water, etc.). Because of this, it's not that easy to grip onto, but clearly lashing out at social conventions, religion, conformity, and government - what else ya got? It's not as much as protest anthem as a Theory of Everything, and it helps that the song is pretty great too, with the nearly shrieked chorus anchoring the long slow journey til when the band finally kicks in. But the full band part of 'McGoohan's Blues' isn't some payoff, just a plateau, and not what I tend to remember. As a whole, Talmy holds Folkjokeopus together well, and there's very little throwaway beyond 'Exercising Some Control', about a dog (which does sound the most like the music-hall influenced Kinks of anything here). Eastern raga influences rears its head on 'In the Time of Water', though it's too brief to really notice; 'Ballad of Songwriter' casts the songwriter as the bringer of light, and may be the predecessor to the 'Dayman' song from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia; it's also where, on this listen, I started to hear a similarity to another eccentric English Roy from the same era, Mr. Wood, who shares the slight hint of the carnivalesque with Harper. 'Composer of Life' is another nearly forgotten cut, a twee, falsetto sketch that is actually fucking beautiful and one of the other underrated gems on this record. I gave this three full listens just now, which may seem a bit silly since I have 8 more Harper LPs to plow through, but I keep wanting to go back to 'She's The One'. Maybe because of the presence of 'McGoohan's', this would be my pick for the Roy Harper album to get, if you are only seeking one, since it feels pretty evenly dispersed over all of his different approaches. The one thing this lacks is some of the stunning fingerpicking from Sophsticated Beggar, but Stomcock lies ahead....

Gong - 'Camembert Electrique' (Virgin)

Gong is one of those bands that you can imagine was more fun to be in than to listen to, but that's not true in the case of Camembert Electrique; their most popular album, I think, or at least the one that I listen to the most. This is the fun side of progressive rock, but it's not really that proggy - the songs are relatively short, mostly built around pop ditties written by Daevid Allen, and while we get some tape manipulations and sax solos and crazy druggie vocals, it's nothing like Yes or Crimson - but rather, a tight rock band with some odd flavours. This was recorded in France, as the title indicates, and you'd think this would bring a more continental atmosphere to these Canterbury boys, but I don't know; I don't think this sounds much like French or Italian prog of the time, and Allen is Australian anyway so it's not like the British-base of Gong meant they normally sound like Tenpole Tudor. Allen's exuberance carries through, whether it's chanting 'O mother / let's do it again', the elegance of 'And You Tried So Hard',  or the irrepressible glee of 'Fohat Digs Holes in Space'. And the band is pretty versatile - a rather tight-knit unit at the point, at least compared to the big messy groups I always think of as characterising later (and Pierre Morlein's) Gong. On 'You Can't Kill Me'  and 'Dynamite' they sound quite pointed, and almost severe - the goofiness is buried, or at least balanced by a harder psych edge, kinda like, I dunno -- Jane's Addiction? But then they also can slip into moments of sweet, sweet melody, such as the chorus of 'And You Tried So Hard', a song which feels like it's changing rock sub-genres with each verse. The album is structured around four sub-30 second experimental tape pieces, appearing at the beginning and end of each side (locked grooves at the end of course, and clumsy ones at that); the 'songs' of 1 finish with two medleys, with the beautiful 'I Am Your Fantasy' (led by the gorgeous, lush vocals of Gilli Smyth) being the standout track, possibly of the whole record. The best moments of swirling space rock use echo effects over a Czukay-like bassline; 'Fohat Digs Holes in Space' runs away with this concept, building up a creeping sense of malevolence until the hook/vocals come in to save the day. And it's got the obligatory drug reference, lackadaisical approach, and noodly sax solo, to make it a truely iconic track. You know, at their worst, Gong could be seen as the proto-Phish; not that Phish are all that bad (I got sucked into a wormhole watching them cover the VU's Loaded on YouTube one night, and it was all right!). But now, they already feel like such a relic, even though this type of goofy druggy prog-pop has never died, but merely evolved.

Game Theory - 'Real Nighttime' (Enigma)

Sometimes I feel like this is Game Theory's best record. It has a nice, full 80's pop production and a lot of guitars, and Miller's voice is given the right about of reverb and compression to make it really soar over these songs. And lyrically it also might have the right balance of the cryptic and relatable, though I like his more experimental verbal constructions. The text on the back cover is cryptic and feels like an Arno Schmidt translation, but the songs inside are only halfway there - 'She'll Be a Verb' is actually a fairly straight love song (if a slightly wistful one); '24' captures the confusion of maturity with no relation to the Red House Painters song of the same name. If you've ever read Miller's excellent book Music: What happened? you'll know he was heavily influenced by the dBs and Chris Stamey in particular; you can hear this influence probably most thoroughly on Real Nighttime of all his records, both in terms of melodic construction and the affect of his singing. Chilton and Big Star too, with 'You Can't Have Me' getting a cover version, though I'm not wild about this take, which seems to remove the pain from Chilton's delivery. The violent overtones of 'Friend of the Family' are echoed in the very punchy drum recording technique, a stomper that opens up in the chorus and is probably the best song on the record. But that's not discounting the brash opener '24', or the sinewy, chorus-laden riff of 'Curse of the Frontier Land'. The latter ambiguously questions success in the music industry or maybe it's just California he's talking about; either way, it's drenched in the imagery of decay and sadness, and odd and moving juxtaposition against Miller's youth-infused voice. You could argue this is almost overproduced, with phase and flange effects on the lead guitars, and keyboards pulsing in the corners of the mix. But I think it works really well. The concise 'I Turned Her Away' closes things out, and there's such a joyous feeling to this record that it makes me really sad Miller has left this earth. But there's even wilder frontiers ahead....