•
Rating:
The Van Der Graaf Generator are perhaps my favorite band in the prog scene and beyond, and when in 2013 I had the chance to see them live in Pistoia, it was like a dream come true. Too bad that, on that occasion, the performance was brief since more space was given to Steven Wilson (who was careful not to share the stage with one of his declared idols). When the band decided to reunite in 2005, expectations were high: the albums of the new phase, namely "Present" (2005), still with David Jackson, "Trisector" (2008), and "A Grounding In Numbers" (2011) demonstrated that, while not being objectively masterpieces, the Generator still had something to say. Unfortunately, due to unspecified misunderstandings, after "Present" the legendary saxophonist David Jackson left. It was certainly not a painless departure considering that, historically, David Jackson was the soul of Van Der Graaf in the eyes of the public alongside Peter Hammill. Honestly, something was lost, and I feel I can safely say that it was a heavy loss, so much so that, according to some, the band no longer made sense. That said, the Generator managed to reorganize and continued on their path with great commitment and dedication. This is clearly demonstrated by this new stunning live album entitled "Merlin Atmos" released by Esoteric Antenna. The 2013 tour, which also touched Italy, as mentioned, was in some ways memorable: the setlist presented was simply thrilling. To give an idea, the epochal suite "A Plague Of Lighthouse-Keepers" was performed entirely for the first time, and also for the first time, the legendary "Flight", another suite contained in Peter Hammill's solo album "A Black Box" (1980), was played as Van Der Graaf Generator.
"Merlin Atmos", for which I strongly recommend the limited Deluxe 2 CD edition, is a great album that should not be missing from the collection of anyone who loves the Van Der Graaf. The first track is indeed "Flight": when I heard it in Pistoia, I saw more than one person shed a few tears. "A Plague Of Lighthouse-Keepers" is the other highlight of the album: it was played almost perfectly, and like "Flight", it comes from the Milan concert, considered by the band to be the best of that tour: Hammill was in great shape, and although his voice is not what it used to be, he delivered a great performance supported by the great work of Hugh Banton and Guy Evans. There is also a crazy, corrosive, and chilling version of "Gog", one of the warhorses from "In Camera" (1974), another solo "hammillion" album. The new songs, namely "Lifetime", "All That Before," and "Bunsho," may have less impact compared to these masterpieces but do not look out of place.
The second disc starts with 2 tracks from "Trisector": "Interference Patterns" is very reminiscent of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, while "Over The Hill" is the closest the band has come to the glories of the past. After "Your Time Starts Now," there is also room for "Scorched Earth", taken from the great "Godbluff" (1975), and for "Meurglys III, The Songwrites Guild," a suite that comes from "World Record" (1976). The level remains consistently high even if it doesn't reach the peaks of the first CD. "Man Erg" is another classic from the milestone "Pawn Hearts" (1971). The closure is entrusted to "Childlike Faith In Childhood’s End" from the immortal "Still Life" (1976).
"Merlin Atmos" is the testimony of a historic event and confirms how the Generator has never extinguished and has always remained active throughout these years.
Tracklist and Lyrics
10 Scorched Earth (10:13)
(Hammill - Jackson)
Just one crazy moment while the dice are cast,
he looks into the future and remembers what is past,
wonders what he's doing on this battlefield,
shrugs to his shadow, impatient, too proud yet to kneel.
In his wake he leaves scorched earth and work in vain;
smoke drifts up behind him - he is free again,
free to run before the onslaught of a deadly foe,
leaving nothing fit for pillage, hardly leaving home.
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
Charging madly forward, tracks across the snow,
wind screams madness to him, ever on he goes
leaving spoor to mark his passage, trace his weary climb.
Cross the moor and make the headland -
stumbling, wayward, blind.
In the end his footprints extend as one single line.
This latest exponent of heresy is goaded into an attack,
persuaded to charge at his enemy.
Too late, he knows it is, too late now to turn back,
too soon by far to falter.
The past sits uneasily at his rear,
he's walking right into the trap,
surrounded, but striving through will and fear.
Ahead of him he knows there waits an ambuscade
but the dice slip through his fingers
and he's living from day to day,
carrying his world around upon his back,
leaving nothing behind but the tell-tale of his track.
He will not be hostage, he will not be slave,
no snare of past can trap him, though the future may.
Still he runs and burns behind him in advanced retreat;
still his life remains unfettered - he denies defeat.
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
Leave the past to burn - at least that's been his own.
Scorched earth, that's all that's left when he's done;
holding nothing but beholden to no-one,
claiming nothing, out of no false pride, he survives.
Snow tracks are all that's left to be seen
of a man who entered the course of a dream,
claiming nothing but the life he's known
- this, at least, has been his own.
13 Childlike Faith in Childhood's End (12:36)
Existence is a stage on which we pass,
a sleepwalk trick for mind and heart;
it's hopeless, I know, but onward I must go
and try to make a start
at seeing something more
than day to day survival, chased by final death.
if I believed this the sum of the life to which we've come,
I wouldn't waste my breath.
Somehow, there must be more.
There was a time when more was felt than known
but now, entrenched inside my sett,
in light more mundane, thought rattles round my brain:
we live, we die...and yet?
In the beginning there was order and destiny
but now that path has reached the border
and on our knees is no way to face the future, whatever it be.
Though the forces which hold us in place
last through eons in unruffled grace
we, too, wear the face of creation.
As anti-matter sucks and pulses periodically
the bud unfolds, the bloom is dead, all space is living history.
It seems as though time must betray us yet we're alive
and though I see no God to save us, still we survive
through the centuries of progress
which don't get us very far.
All illusion! All is bogus...
we don't yet know what we are.
Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man,
with lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're grains of sand
and though, in time, the sea may claim us for its own
we are the rocks which root the future - on us it grows!
We might not be there to share it
if eternity's a jest but I think that I can bear it
if the next life is the best.
Even if there is a heaven when we die,
endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie
that always comes as answer to the question
"Why do we see through the eyes of creation?"
Adrift without a course,
it's very lonely here,
our only conjecture
what lies behind the dark.
Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
think of a lifetime which means more than my own one,
dreams of a grander thing than we are.
Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders...
when all life is over who can say
no mutated force shall remain?
Though the towers of the city are denied to we men of clay
still we know we shall scale the heights some day.
Frightened in the silence, frightened, but thinking very hard,
let us make computations of the stars.
Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch us run:
faster, longer, harder, stronger, now it comes...
colour blisters, image splinters gravitate
towards the centre, in final splendour disintegrate.
The universe now beckons
and Man, too, must take His place;
just a few last fleeting seconds
to wander in the waste,
and the children who were ourselves move on,
reincarnation stills its now perfected song,
and at last we are free of the bonds of creation.
All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies and slavers too,
all the throng who have danced a merry tune...
human we can all be, but Humanity we must rise above,
in the name of all faith and hope and love.
There's a time for all pilgrims, and a time for the fakers too,
there's a time when we all will stand alone and nude,
naked to the galaxies...naked, but clothed in the overview:
as we reach Childhood's End we must start anew.
And though dark is the highway,
and the peak's distance breaks my heart,
for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
believing that what waits for us
is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past.
In the death of mere Humans Life shall start!
Loading comments slowly
