Van der Graaf Generator
The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other

"The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other" is an album that I particularly love within the Generator's discography and, in my opinion, one of their best. The previous "The Aerosol Grey Machine" was actually intended to be Hammill's solo debut even though it remains a great album, undoubtedly the favorite for those who are followers of psychedelia and do not love the excesses of progressive. In The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other, a fundamental figure that would characterize the sound of VDGG for almost their entire career enters, namely David Jackson with his legendary double sax. Needless to say, for many, Van Der Graaf was Hammill and Jackson: the departure of the latter made many fans frown, who claimed that the last incarnation of the Generator is something lopsided and imperfect.

The sound of the group tends very much towards dark and gothic atmospheres, so much so that the music proposed can be defined as a dark variant of the progressive genre: Hammill's lyrics indeed often venture into necrophilic and horrific themes, a legacy of his love for the gothic storytelling of authors such as Poe (to whom he later dedicated the solo album "The Fall of the House of Usher") and Lovecraft. The lyrics are complex, never banal, and mix science with literary references.

The beginning is aggressive right away with "Darkness": a threatening hiss of wind immediately foreshadows what we are going to face, namely a nightmare recited by Hammill's fevered voice supported by Nick Potter's bass, aggressive sax "riffs" and Banton's ghostly organ: we are immersed in an apocalyptic, end-of-the-world atmosphere. The piece would become one of their live warhorses from that period. Especially, to everyone’s surprise, VDGG were very successful in Italy where they were welcomed as real stars and became a cult band with a greater following than in England. Even today, they have no issues admitting that if it hadn't been for Italy, their story would have been different. With "Refugees", we are faced with a timeless classic of theirs, a typically Hammillian and intimate song that reaches great heights.

Then with "White Hammer", the lugubrious sound of the organ suddenly returns and slowly the unwary listener realizes that there is no escape, the lyrics take you back in time to the horrors of the Inquisition, and the atmosphere is more than ever suicidal and barely comforting with a delirious finale supported by Jackson's sax and a black mass organ. We then return to an apparent calm with the magnificent bucolic scene of "Out of my Book" which features the use of acoustic guitar and the more aggressive "Whatever Would Robert Have Said". It closes with "After the Flood", the longest track, as proof that the group was adapting to the duration canons of the era: it is one of the first mini-suites that we will also hear in the subsequent "H to He - Who Am the Only One".

While not their masterpiece (that remains "Pawn Hearts"), this is perhaps the VDGG album I prefer: the gothic and delirious "feeling", alternating with quieter and more intimate moments, has always hypnotized me and made the music of these grooves unforgettable.