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Rating: It's 1973, and Peter Hammill has just left Van Der Graaf. After "Fool's Mate," his first solo album where he revisited old Vdgg songs that were never released, Peter returns with his second solo album, which should be the "first" real album.
It should be, because this album is truly very, perhaps too, heterogeneous, with songs that are similar only in blocks of two-three... But let's go on to describe it.
"German overalls", "Dropping the torch", "Slender threads" and "What is it worth" are indeed similar songs, all voice/acoustic guitar (occasionally Jackson's sax sparsely intervenes here and there like in "German overalls" but otherwise the rigid voice-guitar formula reigns). A similar but opposite discussion goes for "In the end" and "Easy to slip away", where instead we switch to the voice-piano formula.
And these seem to be indeed the most successful episodes of the album: especially "In the end" is an exceptional piece where after the initial verses Hammill's voice soars in the chorus, flying and making us fly together with his cruel piano. Almost equally beautiful is "Easy to slip away", projected "in your face" directly with a wicked and beautiful piano passage, and then continued with an invocation once again to old friends Mike and Susie from the famous "Refugees" of the album "The least we can do...".
It is a supplicant prayer, this chorus, that Hammill, lost and desperate, throws to the sky in the name of a salvation that he is always searching for... Desperately beautiful is "Rock and role", which, as the title suggests, is a rock piece, the most devastating of the album, the only one perhaps together with "In the black room", where Hammill uses the full formation (Evans on drums, Potter on bass, Jackson on sax, and Banton on keyboards). The part where Hammill sings "At impossible speeeeed..." is suggestive.
"In the black room" is the only truly prog piece of the work, and it begins by literally making us jump, because it follows a very tranquil "Dropping the torch" and starts without a break with the latter but with a monstrous sax riff, then continuing with a hammering piano riff. The song then evolves in the second part "The tower" where Hammill once again enjoys giving us heart attacks by suddenly shouting "Rats run", "Snacks coil". The song closes with "In the black room II" with the soothing flute of Jackson.
In conclusion, an album as I said "in blocks", which is still transitional in the career of the Manchester musician, at least in my opinion. A bit more homogeneity would certainly have done well to the whole.
Tracklist and Lyrics
07 Easy To Slip Away (00:00)
My friends, I never really thought you'd go,
but, then, we know that's the way it happens here.
Now time is like cat's cradle in my hands:
I gather up the strands much too slowly.
The refugees are gone...they take their separate paths,
obliterate the past, figures in an ash shroud.
Susie, I guess you're on your way to be a star,
but I don't know where you are;
the only time I seem to see you is on the TV
It's so easy just to slip away....
Mike!
It's a year or two since I've seen you....
I might have dropped you a line
if I'd had time
or the will.
It's my fault too: I play a hermit's role
of cars and stages, wages, supersoul,
hardly ever seem to get outside these days.
So, dear friends, as we grow on we feel to grow away,
can only live in the hope that some day
it will all return.
It's so easy to slip away....
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