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.

Genesis - 'Selling England By the Pound' (Atlantic)

Forgot I Had This Department: Yeah, I have a Genesis record, and of course I like some Genesis, because they are good records that you can find in charity shops for very cheap. But I don't like them that much - even a cursory glance at the A through F's of this gauntlet will show my prog tastes tend to stay away from the bigger names and likewise from medieval and fantasy-leaning lyrics. Genesis were always just right in the middle of it all for me; I greatly prefer them to Yes or ELP or things like that, but don't enjoy them as much as I enjoy King Crimson. This record has some airy-faery stuff (mostly in the opening track, which is called, wonderfully, 'Dancing with the Moonlit Knight' -- and has some nice flutes and bells) but the real reason I have this record, honestly, is the song 'More Fool Me'. It's a cute little throwaway love song at the end of side one, and it's sung by Phil Collins in an affable, genteel croon instead of Gabriel's bombast. I wouldn't profess to know the entire Genesis catalogue or even much beyond this and Foxtrot and the 80s MTV hits, but it's undoubtedly my favourite Genesis song. If I remembered that I owned this record (which I don't, usually, unless an alphabetical blog-revue forces me to confront my accumulation), then surely I would pull it out occasionally just to hear that song. The rest of the vinyl is scarcely played, at least by my stylii. Though now, on a mandatory listen, it's clearly Genesis doing what they did best. There's some searing guitar solos (though they aren't as broken or blistering as, say, Area) and some epic key changes and some Mellotron and a very English feel to it overall.  'The Battle of Epping Forest' is a lengthy narrative about contemporary British unrest, which is an achievement in its own by putting street gangs into the usual medieval epic aspirations of 70s British progressive rock, but the song goes on forever (even to me) and I find it a bit unmemorable overall beyond it's conceit. This is going to go to the sell pile (or the give-away pile) not because I dislike it, but because I have too many records and can't justify keeping this for one song which I could just listen to via YouTube when I get a hankerin' for it.

Faust - 'So Far' (Recommended)

I've always envisioned Faust as a bit of a 'boy band', in the sense that they were put together by Uwe Nettelbeck to capitalise on the psychedelic craze. The best line from Wikipedia's entry on the first album is definitely "In 1971, Polydor entered a deal with Uwe Nettelbeck to assemble a musical ensemble that could compete with the likes of The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and Small Faces." So they're basically the Backstreet Boys of their time! Again, it's hard to decide on the pinnacle of Faust's first four albums because they're all so fucking perfect, but So Far might be the most cohesive record of them as a 'band'. It's more diverse than the debut, opening with 'It's a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl' which is typically attributed as indebted to the Velvet Underground, but I hear more of the Godz in it, plus a hint of soul. Really! That's what my soul looks like. 'No Harm' is the one I like to play when I DJ, though I never remember the name of it ("Daddy, take a banana, Tomorrow is Sunday!", yeah that one) and when turned up LOUD, it sounds absolutely goddamned fucking incredible. This is Faust almost pissing out perfect, spazzy guitar-psych just because they can, and it's somehow a bit Dada and distinctly European and yet menacing and accessible simultaneously. They also manage to sound like Throbbing Gristle on 'Mamie is Blue', and spin some delicate folk moments with 'On the Way to Abamae'. It's occasionally goofy, like when the voices all line up on 'I've Got My Car and My TV', but more often it has a haunting, challenging darkness that spins a web of associations for me. There's actually less tape manipulations and studio fuckery here than I remember - it's really an album of songs, yet it's hard to grasp what these guys are actually about. I find something quite expressive among all these confusing branches, but then they had me at the first album. This is another reissue but one that has the beautiful prints inside, though the paper slipcase holding them is so tight that I rarely take them out. It was the last of the original four to get a CD re-release (or at least it was hella difficult to find in 1999) and thus the one I came to latest, so in many ways it still sounds the freshest, and it's a beautiful, inspiring package.

Areski & Brigitte Fontaine - 'L'Incendie' (Get Back)

Areski and Brigitte Fontaine make such a cute couple; he's the bearded musical voyager and she's the arty answer to ye-ye pop. Together they were the Gallic version Richard & Mimi Fariña, or maybe Mickey and Mallory. Now, my French is barely beyond high school level so I don't know what the hell they're singing about and I'm afraid to stop and figure it out, but there's a pleasure to be found in ignorance. Side A has Areski's darkly shadowed face on the label. The nursery rhyme glow is there on some songs ('Le 6 Septembre'), sung like a round or other sort of children's workshop. We also get whacked out porn guitar behind Brigitte's fantastic voice ('L'Engourdie') and then dark medieval churchy dirges like 'Nous Avons Tant Parlé'. It's a grab bag of sounds from the 60's/early 70's, with the Eastern vibe laid on thick. When you flip to side B (so you can look at Brigitte's face spinning), you get Areski's solo vocals over bongos and snakecharmer flutes. It's one of only 2 songs over 3 minutes, yet it feels particularly long because it's Brigitte who I came to party with and I can't hear her. But the other "long" track is the whispered 'Après la guerre'. Intimate and kinda sexy, with the odd plink and pluck in the background, it's like that scene in the Blair Witch Project where the one girl just puts the camera on her face in the dark and cries about how scared she is. I thought L'Incendie was their first album but it's hard to tell since when Get Back reissued it, they didn't bother to include any additional contextual notes, such as a date. Some Google 'research' places it at '74, and therefore after Comme la Radio, but I always thought it was '71 and had filed it before. So now when writing this, I have to save this draft til I've reviewed Comme la Radio which means I'm listening to them out of order, an error I will correct when I refile (so Encourager Templates take 2, coming in April 2012, doesn't make the same mistake). Which means this bit I wrote below is now totally wrong and irrelevant, but instead of recycling it for a future qualifying post I'll just dump it here:

I'm always really interested in the records made just before the unfuckwithable ones. I'm drawn to records like The Colour of Spring, Vampire on Titus, The Dreaming - slightly flawed, perhaps, but made during a creative stride with the masterpiece just visible in the distance. Sometimes I like these predecessors even more than the "big" albums, plus sometimes you've listened to the more acclaimed album too much. I recognize Comme la Radio as the masterpiece but have more often pulled out L'Incendie because of this factor. I've always imagine Fontaine as the one calling the shots (despite Areski's top billing - I mean, that's just alphabetical, right?) and feeling frustrated at all of the fruity arrangements - that despite this record's eclecticism, it still just wasn't quite right, ie: she's almost there, but not yet. And only when paired with the Art Ensemble of Chicago do her songs really explode into something magical, but she had to wait til the next album for that. So knowing this, it's improved L'Incendie a bit in my eyes -- you can hear the hesitation, the uncertainty, the hope. And ending with 'Le Chant des Chants', so strident yet abrupt, waiting for a coda that is yet to come.

Yeah, well, screwed that up for sure....