Oar
If Death ever picks up a few chords and takes it to the studio, the result is likely to sound a lot like this. From the haunted vocals of "Cripple Creek," the choking heart of "Diana" and the ferocious guitar licks on "War In Peace," perhaps the album's best track, something darkly powerful lurks beneath the surface of this masterpiece. Amid so many tossed-off attempts at marketable psychedelia in Spence's day, this is one of the few with at least an air of authenticity. Though as song after well-wrought song unfolds, it becomes less of an "air" and much more of the real thing. Equally as startling as Spence's sense for great songwriting is the range of voices and tones he explores. The oddly comforting "Little Hands" descends into the possessed "Cripple Creek." "Books of Moses" might as well be the only recorded vocal performance of Moses himself, it sounds that rusty and raw; yet this too floats quietly into that other end of Skip's endless spectrum with the unassuming "Dixie Peach Promenade."
Skip's story is the stuff of legend now: frustrated with Jefferson Airplane's refusal to allow the guitarist any more than the role of a drummer, he fled to the briefly brilliant Moby Grape before strapping his guitar to his back and taking a motorcycle ride to Nashville, where he recorded this album in a haze of drugs and alienation. His is one of those cases in which the confidence of genius is the thing that kept him from glory in his day, but assured him a longer-lasting spotlight among the rock 'n roll immortals. The indignity of his mental illness and the decades he spent wasting away in asylums is compounded only by the alleged "tribute album" released for him in 1999. The hope was that it would pay his medical expenses, but Spence died just around the release of the album. Even so, why guys like the squealing money-bags of rock, Robert Plant, couldn't simply cut a check for the man's bills rather than releasing this "tribute album," bound to fail commercially because hardly anyone living had given a second's thought to its tributee in at least thirty years, is beyond me. At least it served up a classic rendition of "Book of Moses" by the always reliable Tom Waits, as well as a weirdly effective cover of "Halo of Gold" by Beck. Yet only one or two of the various artists featured on the tribute has ever managed the simultaneously accessible and challenging music Spence achieved on this, his only solo album. A solid affair from start to finish, it testifies to the combination of talent and substance so rarely bestowed upon the music world.
Preferred Trendy Chemical Amusement aid for this Album: Alcohol
Skip's story is the stuff of legend now: frustrated with Jefferson Airplane's refusal to allow the guitarist any more than the role of a drummer, he fled to the briefly brilliant Moby Grape before strapping his guitar to his back and taking a motorcycle ride to Nashville, where he recorded this album in a haze of drugs and alienation. His is one of those cases in which the confidence of genius is the thing that kept him from glory in his day, but assured him a longer-lasting spotlight among the rock 'n roll immortals. The indignity of his mental illness and the decades he spent wasting away in asylums is compounded only by the alleged "tribute album" released for him in 1999. The hope was that it would pay his medical expenses, but Spence died just around the release of the album. Even so, why guys like the squealing money-bags of rock, Robert Plant, couldn't simply cut a check for the man's bills rather than releasing this "tribute album," bound to fail commercially because hardly anyone living had given a second's thought to its tributee in at least thirty years, is beyond me. At least it served up a classic rendition of "Book of Moses" by the always reliable Tom Waits, as well as a weirdly effective cover of "Halo of Gold" by Beck. Yet only one or two of the various artists featured on the tribute has ever managed the simultaneously accessible and challenging music Spence achieved on this, his only solo album. A solid affair from start to finish, it testifies to the combination of talent and substance so rarely bestowed upon the music world.
Preferred Trendy Chemical Amusement aid for this Album: Alcohol
No comments:
Post a Comment