Peter Hammill
Nadir's Big Chance

December '74 (but the album is dated '75) and the Van Der Graaf Generator return. They return, yes, because, despite a strongly hard-punk rock album, sui generis for VDGG, here we see all of them at work in service of the fifth solo album by Mr. Hammill. And I say "all" because finally the reluctant Hugh Banton decides to set aside the disagreements with his leader and also contribute to the fruition of the work. What comes out is an album that is atypical but still has its beauty (I am biased in this, because I almost always judge as gold everything the ex-leader of the Van Der Graaf Generator does...) and is said to inspire the emerging punk of Johnny Rotten and company, and certainly Bowie, especially Diamond Dogs.

The Songs.

It starts with the title track "Nadir's Big Chance," a strongly hard-rock piece, devastating in its drum parts by Guy Evans, especially after the part "until your body's rigid and you see the stars": blatantly punk in the lyrics, very brief to be honest, imagine it concludes with an anthem that is almost an "Anarchy In U.K." ante litteram, as Hammill sings "smash the system the song!". An unimaginable phrase just a few years earlier, considering the early, dramatic VDGG. The fierce sax by David Jackson is also fundamental here, as in all Hammill's works.

"The Institute Of Mental Health" is a song written with the old friend Chris Judge-Smith, and is introduced by a semi-serious march by Evans, accompanied by an equally ironic synthesizer with a strange and quirky melody, joined by Hammill's various overdubbed choruses. A strange experiment.

With "Open Your Eyes" it's back to rock, with a catchy and light sax melody by Jackson; after the second verse, "I told her I was dancing," the group believes they have suddenly become Deep Purple and Hugh Banton James Lord: indeed, he performs a long organ solo worthy of that great keyboardist and that great hard-rock group.

The same goes, but in a minor tone, for "Nobody's Business": another rock piece, but noteworthy only for Hammill's hoarse and meowing vocals, which unfolds in high-pitched vocalizations following the refrain "Oh, you're nobody's business". Then there's also Hugh Banton's assertive bass right after the part of the song which goes "And you're tired and forlorn\And you're no-one!" that allows Evans to finish and restart grandly with devastating cymbal hits on the drums...

"Been Alone So Long" is perhaps the best song on the album (this one is also written by Judge-Smith), a poignant ballad for acoustic guitar, sax, and drums about the loneliness of someone who can no longer find someone to love, to the point of forgetting "what's it's like\feel somebody next to me" ("...what it's like to have someone next to me..."). The fortune of this song, one of the few famous by Hammill, and which will be covered in various best-ofs and live albums, is precisely because it is a standard song in verse-chorus-verse-chorus format, which is very rare in Hammill's repertoire.

"Pompeii" is a sweet and melancholic song about the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD and its consequences for the inhabitants and the Vesuvius landscape: the lyrics transport us just before the eruption, while girls with flower garlands dance, and various guests celebrate by drinking wine, and while two lovers watch the spectacle offered to them, and the wine in their glasses becomes irreparably bitter... The instruments greatly contribute to creating a dreamlike atmosphere suspended between reality and fantasy, with a sweet acoustic guitar whispering lullaby notes...

"Shingle" is, on the other hand, a dark, depressive song that brings us back to moods more in line with Hammill's style: "beneath the caterwaul of scattered call of wind" "beneath the meowing of a scattered gust of wind" the singer (I would be inclined to say "the poet": professional deformation, as I study Literature, or irresistible Hammill beauty?) still sees the image of his woman's goodbye, standing in front of the shoreline, amid the swirling of all the atmospheric elements (this sensation of the wind, once again well-rendered by Jackson's sax).

"Airport" is still a desperate song, but this time with a yearning for redemption, a desire for revenge, to still do, still say something: "Believe me, I don't want you to leave me" sings Hammill, and here, without needing translation, it is understood that the singer raises a protest against a possible abandonment by the beloved: here, noteworthy is the presence of a trumpet to give a tad more "epic" tone to the sentimental subject.

"People You Were Going To" is a song from sixty-nine, here resurrected as it already happened with "Ferret And Featherbird" on the album "In Camera": not very interesting, except for certain irritating effects of piano chords and "insistent" drums.

With "Birthday Special", we return once again to rock after four different genre pieces: but it is a song that is in a sense "cheerful" and ironic, about a little girl celebrating her birthday among panthers, lizards, and parrots. However, there are also unclear sides here, such as when Hammill says he wants to make this birthday "the best you’ve ever had". Sexual bragging? Merry partying? To philologists the hard task of finding the solution.

It closes with "Two Or Three Spectres", another masterpiece along with "Been Alone So Long", a six-minute piece, driven by an irresistible sax line by Jackson, then a roll of Evans's drum, another round of Jackson continuing the phrase, and finally three very strong cymbal hits by Evans to close all the jingle and restart. The whole song is like this, and on this divertissement a very "spoken" vocal by Hammill is nested, with a very lengthy and never melodically varied text. But it's that damn sax and drum line that sends you into ecstasy and makes you not notice the manifested repetitiveness of the piece and makes it one of the most successful episodes of the album.

In conclusion, an "atypical" album for Peter Hammill, I repeat, in which there's practically nothing Progressive, and perhaps precisely because of this, it may not please the most uncompromising lovers of the genre, but it might perhaps say something very good to all other rock music enthusiasts...