Hatfield and the North (Virgin)

My favourite part on this Hatfield and the North record (a record which actually is packed with numerous small pleasures) comes about 2/3 of the way through 'Son of "There's No Place Like Homerton"', the longest piece on the record; some bright, piercing tones float over the otherwise melodic jam, sticking out like if Stereolab guested on just ten seconds of the song, though I think its actually a flute or woodwinds. It introduces a long, beautiful vocal section where the three female vocalists who are mostly relegated to backing roles come to the forefront. They chant in a round-like pattern, setting down some moments of total magic which has traces of English folk, early music, and whatever a Greek chorus is supposed to be. It's this part I keep coming back to whenever I listen to this record, the first side of which otherwise passes into the background, a melodic, rolling example of Canterbury scene prog in an advanced iteration. The lineup has Pip Pyle from Gong, Phil Miller from Matching Mole, and two guys from Caravan, one the brother of the 'other' Steve Miller who did that underrated duet record with Lol Coxhill -- and it sounds accordingly like Canterbury music was supposed to sound. All of the musicianship is excellent and in that style which feels hopelessly dated now - tight changes, affected guitars, Robert Wyatt guest spots, fast instrumental interplay, some great juxtapositions (a phone rings near the end of 'Fol de Rol' and the singing is finished through it; there's some concrète dabbling in other incidental spots), and songs with titles like 'Shaving is Boring'. They're capable of some engaging heat - the aggressive ending of 'Rifferama' sounds exactly how you'd expect a song called 'Rifferama' to sound. Whenever I try to explain to people that I like prog rock, I should cite records like this as an example; it's not as far out or spazzy as more European NWW-list stuff, but it's also a hell of a lot more interesting than Yes or ELP. The weirdness is controlled, and it's brainy without losing sight of music's power to create images and memories; sometimes the bass playing is a bit overbearing, which is a shame because the band can create some pretty nice soundworlds with basic rock instrumentation. The Pyle-penned 'Shaving' retains the acid edge of Gong, minus Daevid Allen (or anyone else) singing, and with an awesome, phenomenal space rock crescendo. Matching Mole was more fun of course, since it was Wyatt's band through and through, and I have a huge soft spot for the first National Health album, a band which emerged out of Hatfield, particularly because of the epic jam 'Tenemos Roads', probably the high point of this whole genre of music. 

Roy Harper - 'When an Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease' (Chrysalis)

I have the North American edition of this album, which is called HQ in the UK, but to be honest I like this title more. I think of this (roughly) as Harper's Rust Never Sleeps, with one side being electric and one side acoustic, but it's actually not true - the rock numbers have acoustic interludes and the second side actually rocks a bit on 'Hallucinating Light'. Yet there's something of a duality here - maybe because side A is largely uptempo songs about big topics, and side B is a bit more delicate, pastoral, and romantic. This feels like the summation of everything Roy Harper explored between 1968-1974, synthesised into one masterful album, yet despite this cohesion, I wouldn't call this his best record (but certainly a good one). 'The Game (parts 1-5)' opens it up, a 13-minute epic investigation of the mysteries of existence. He's done these deep, rambling philosophical numbers before ('McGoohan's Blues', 'The Lords Prayer') but here, the whole work is built around a Kinks-style 'You Really Got Me' riff, which keeps everything from spiralling out of control. I'm not sure which parts are which, but somewhere in the middle, things take a nice shimmery folk turn, and it builds up to the climactic, inevitable rock-out ending. The final lyrics are 'Please leave this world as clean as when you came', and this is reflected in the composition itself which is relatively tidy, closer to Zeppelin than to Yes. It sounds a bit like Harper has shifted beyond melancholy to a sense of resignation; the feeling of 'The Game' is of a narrator trapped in structures beyond his control, trying to determine what art means, what his relationships have been worth. It's much more existential than sci-fi, and it works pretty well, even if you won't find yourself with a catchy melody stuck in your head afterwards.The big themes continue on 'The Spirit Lives', which starts off pontificating over a slidey steel guitar bed before starting to rock out. Here, Christianity is his target, and his atheistic, humanistic assertions rank up there with Burma's 'New Nails'; Roy Harper is more punk than anyone realised, perhaps because he rarely wraps his observations in easy slogans. Anyway, I'm always up for some religion-bashing, so I like it. The weak part of side one (and the whole record, really) is 'Grown Ups Are Just Silly Children', which ends the side, again reminding me of Roy Wood and Wizzard in particular. This rave-up is a throwaway number but it's okay, because side two is so lovely. 'Referendum (Legend)' I guess is some reboot on Sophisticated Beggar's 'Legend', or maybe its just a totally different song. 'Forget Me Not' is a truly beautiful, psychedelic work to immerse oneself in, a totally simple love song where the chorus/echo effects of John Leckie's production work wonders (finally). These days, I tend to gravitate towards the more simple, strong 'songs' instead of the ambitious prog-experimental jams, and this is just fucking stellar. 'Hallucinating Light' is long and trippy, yet very subdued - it precedes mellow minimalist rock bands like Low and the Clientele by two decades and remains a haunting presence even once the record segues into the title track, which is a slow yet fierce dirge about aging, I guess, filled with sports metaphors. The back cover of this outlines the rules for cricket, I guess since us Americans wouldn't know, but I would have rather had the lyrics printed. I don't know if Chris Corsano's Young Cricketer is somehow a reference to this - the album artwork is a little bit similar.

Roy Harper - 'Lifemask' (Chrysalis)

This one tends to get passed over, falling among a run of far better albums, and my memory of the sound is that its all clangy electric guitars mostly strummed without much accompaniment. Side two is given over entirely to 'The Lords Prayer', which may be the longest of all Harper songs but it lacks the dynamic magic of some of this other great long pieces. But side one is bookended by great songs, 'Highway Blues' and 'South Africa'. The latter is a perfect little love song (I have no idea why it's titled such), with swirling, multi-tracked guitars and layers of voice giving it an ethereal 4AD sound, a decade before that was a thing. On this song the heavy-handed production (engineered by John Leckie, who did the next few Harper albums too) works, but in other places I find it to be a bit much. Compared to Stormcock, there isn't really that many more affectations on the instruments, and the synths are mostly held to 'Highway Blues' and 'The Lord's Prayer'. What's missing here is the pastoral feeling, the classic folkie sound which is a conventional thing for me to pine for, but whatever - it's something I love about Harper. That chilling feeling is only really present in 'All Ireland'; the rest of Lifemask is given over to more prog-leaning material. 'Highway Blues' is still a good song, with quintessentially Harperian rambling lyrics, and huge vocal explosions. And of course 'The Lords Prayer', over half of the record, has its moments. It's a song written while Harper was dangerously ill, and as an example of him trying to pack everything possible into one song it's fascinating, with the lyrics thankfully printed out so you can realise that most of them are lines beginning with 'whose...'. But sung and put into a 22 minute song with Jimmy Page and a full band, it somehow just becomes a mess. The man is capable of writing a super catchy pop song and there's none of that here - not a hook to hold onto, and the long spoken introduction establishes a nice podcast atmosphere but the rest of the song doesn't hold up. The 'introduction' to the liner notes is a somewhat whiny screed about his lack of commercial success and in the credits he mentions that one assistant engineer couldn't handle working on 'The Lords Prayer' which maybe should have been a sign. But the man's work has been so stellar to this point that I've overlooked this misstep, and the record which follows more than makes up for the dearth of delicate, romantic love songs. Apparently most version of Lifemask came as a cool gatefold that opened up around his face, but this Chrysalis issue takes the cheap route, so that could be another reason I'm grumpy about this particular record.