Review: Roy Harper, "Once" (LONG)

[Paul Davison (postmaster) <pd@cs.qmw.ac.uk>]

Awareness Records. CD: AWCD1018   LP: AWL1018   Cassette: AWT1018

Here is a review of the new Roy Harper album, "Once", that I referred to
in a recent article about him.

This latest offering from Roy contains some hard-hitting and
uncompromising tracks interleaved with others of a lighter nature.
Although there are backing musicians on all tracks bar one, the mix is
vocal and guitar heavy, giving a more realistic representation of what
you get when you hear it live. Some well-known people play on this
album, which should help sell it to a wider audience than Roy has
had in the past.

Roy's style is to use a decent clean rythmic Ovation acoustic sound,
making use of what I would call some unusual chord progressions or
variants. It produces a pleasing and interesting backing to his voice
which is most definitely not connected to the style used by Suzanne Vega
and her like.

Guest musicians are Steve Broughton, Kate Bush, Terry Cooke, Mark
Feltham, Tony Franklin, David Gilmour, Nick Harper and Mazlyn Jones.

Kate sings on track one. David Gilmour plays on tracks one, two and
seven. I thought I'd better include that for those on the appropriate
mailing lists that this is getting cross-posted to!

Track 1: "Once". This, the title track, is concerned with the fact that
we can only get one chance here. It is something to be relished, and we
may as well make the most of it.

Track 2: "Once in the Middle of Nowhere (link)". This is a minute-long
link to the next track. It contains a recital from "The Home Planet" by
Anatoli Berezovoy, a Russian Cosmonaut. I haven't quite deciphered this
yet except to note that it concerns being away from the Earth and only
having tape recordings of your "real life" to remind you of it.

Track 3: "Nowhere to Run". This is a very strong and moving song
concerning the inhumanity of vivisection. It contains some good harmonica
backing from Mark Feltham.

Track 4: "The Black Clouds of Islam". This track expresses great anger
at the utter stupidity of a certain religion. Nothing more needs to be
said, except that I am very glad this was released as there was some
doubt at one time about whether it was wise to. 

"And the butchers who've got all this blood on their hands
 are the ones who need god to be stood where he stands
 blessing this kidnapping, murder and war
 with books written hundreds of ages before"

Track 5: "If". This one follows the theme of religion and its rights and
wrongs, in an examination of ones own beliefs and why these cannot be
reconciled with the orthodox churches' view of things. It is surely true
that if there is a god, that stands for peace, love and equality as many
believe, then s/he wouldn't need followers to shed blood, follow
ridiculous ancient rites and customs, be struck down with fear, and so
on.

Track 6: "Winds of Change". This is a lovely little track which is short
and to the point. It shoots venom at those leaders who are not what they
should be, and applauds one that is prepared to risk change.

Track 7: "Berliners (A better world)". Obviously, a track concerned with
recent European events. It pays tribute to those that died 50 years ago,
and takes heart from resiliency of spirit.

Track 8: "Sleeping at the Wheel". This track is in a similar vein to
"Still Life" from Descendant of Smith. It is an exploration of feelings
about living in a natural world, a train of thought brought on by
slumber... 

Track 9: "For longer than it Takes". This is a love song, expressing how
the singer feels to be truly full of love and joy and all that yucky
stuff, and pledging eternity.

Track 10: "Ghost Dance". The liner notes say it all: "Ghost Dance is a
tongue-in-cheek reminder about the ways societies usually react when
threatened with crises or extinction. The invention of, or absolute
submission to some kind of god is nearly always top of the list"

So, there you have it. The above interpretations are mostly my own and
hence may well be completely wrong. It is important to note that the
music is not what I would call heavy-going angst-ridden protest folk
music. Far from it. This is a good example of the power that music can
have to lift you and reaffirm ideals that may have been fading due to
too much contact with the "wrong" sort of people with the "wrong" sort
of principles. It's good to be reassured that, yes, there are other
people out there that think the same way that you do. This seems
particularly important to me at the moment in the unbearable atmosphere
of what has become Margaret Thatcher's Britain. Hah!

Lastly, since this has been a rather biased article, I will quote from
Time Out's mini-review of the album (T.O. is a London-based review and
listings magazine):

>"A kind of British Neil Young, Harper has waxed and waned and waned some
>more over the last 20 years or so, but these days he's determined to wax
>only: he's got a new LP out on Awareness records titled "One" (sic).
>It's sombre, angry, sparsely populated by musical instruments and based
>solely around the singers nasal twang".

I don't know what arrangements have been made for US distribution. I
suggest people across the pond hassle their record dealers into finding
out! Thanks for listening.
--
Paul Davison (postmaster for uk.ac.qmw.cs)

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