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.

Kevin Ayers - 'Whatevershebringswesing' (Harvest)

The third Kevin Ayers album leaves behind the outer excursions of the Whole World and goes the mainstream way (aka "way mainstream"). But there's something I really love about this album - it's genuinely dark, more reflective than his other stuff, and apart from the occasional burst of whimsy ('Oh My') it sounds like a real person in a way we haven't heard yet from K.A. I've always thought of these first 3 albums as a trilogy, though listening in sequence they are really quite different beasts. And Whatevershebringswesing opens with a trilogy of its own - 'There is Loving'/'Among Us'/'There is Loving'. The strings are thick, but not saccharine. It still has that strangely continental feel - maybe Kevin Ayers is pop music for the British expatriate in all of us -- but maybe he'd been listening to lots of Jacques Brel by this point. 'Song From the Bottom of a Well' is a grinding, dark song with Lee Ranaldo-style guitar solos; though Ayers is singing in an affected character voice I've always been pretty forgiving because the song takes monotony to the point of beauty. I think Ayers was genuinely a bit depressed during the making of this album, but he's trying to save face. I've always liked albums when the depression is genuine, like Big Star Third for example - the songs aren't all blatant doom 'n gloom like Joy Division or Shakespeare's Sister, but soaked with something real. Or maybe I am confusing depression with melancholy. Was it Stephen Wright who had some joke about "depression is merely anger without enthusiasm"? I don't know how that relates to 'Whatevershebringswesing' (the song) but there's some genuinely bluesy guitar playing and the chord changes are walking along some line, at least. 'Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes' is probably the biggest hit Ayers ever had, and though it's a nice bouncy tune he's certainly had better. A bit of 'Joy of a Toy' is mixed into 'Champange Cowboy Blues', a nice yet odd pastiche of postmodernism in a song which is otherwise memorable for its very porn guitar tone. The scary thing is we're not even halfway through the Kevin Ayers section of the Encourager Templates and the best stuff is all behind us now. So, hang on.