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Rating: The Van Der Graaf Generator are one of the most important groups of the progressive rock movement that emerged in the early Seventies, not very famous but with a particular and highly recognizable style, characterized by dark, dramatic, and immensely modern hues.
After their first album, "Aerosol Grey Machine", which only boasts some melodic songs like "Afterwards", the following three, namely the reviewed "H To He Who Am The Only One" and "Pawn Hearts", are their three masterpieces. I do not prefer any of the three to the others as the sound remains almost the same and the percentage of good songs is likewise. Like three parts of a single work.
The beginning of "The Least..." consists of a gloomy atmosphere, with a dark breath of wind, upon which the drums are added first, like a slight ticking, then the piano, and finally the vocals, initially whispered but then exploding in the chorus together with the sax. It is "Darkness" (with a meaningful title), a splendid "dark" opening, played on the continuous alternation of "quiet" parts, and other noisy, epic, and dramatic sections, marked by Jackson's disorienting sax.
It is followed by a nostalgic, melancholic ballad with an atmosphere that smells of antiquity, "Refugees", opened by a sweet flute doubled by the violin. Hammill's voice is no longer dramatic and dark as in the first song, but has become romantic-melancholic (foreshadowing the likes of Coldplay and Travis by thirty years) and even the sax, which enters later, is much more peaceful and melodic. As time progresses, the mood becomes increasingly epic (with the entrance of background choirs, for example), yet always maintaining that sweet sadness that permeates the entire song.
The third track opens with Banton's organ, which takes us back to very distant times. On this base, the vocals are inserted, in an epic tone, which after a slow start unleashes violently, aided by a nervous guitar and bass riff: this song, like the first, is made up of a continuous interchange between the calm verses and the lively and dramatic chorus; after about six minutes, when it already seems finished, some notes played by a distorted guitar insinuate themselves and foreshadow the magnificent sax solo, neurotic and extremely "noisy".
The tendency to use frequent rhythm changes is even more evident in "Whatever Should Robert Have Said," where the slow acoustic verses alternate throughout the track with the very lively chorus, where the vocals, always underscored by organ and sax, become more histrionic and epic than ever. "Out Of My Book" instead represents a small pause, a medieval tableau in the Genesis style with flute, acoustic guitar, and the usual organ to accompany the singing.
The final track, "After the Flood", beautiful but perhaps a bit too long (it lasts 11 minutes...), re-presents the characteristics of the entire album: alternation of acoustic tableaus, epic-dramatic traits, and moments of noisy fury, with different scores of sax and organ (at one point there is even a flute solo in the style of Ian Anderson). A sort of short version of that masterpiece that will be "A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers", a year later.
The whole is once again dominated by Hammill's exceptional voice with its continuous tone variations, which imprints the true imprint, the VDGG brand, that dramatic, epic, decadent, and melancholic sound.
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
01 Darkness (11/11) (07:27)
Day dawns dark, it now numbers infinity.
Life crawls from the past, watching in wonder
I trace its patterns in me.
Tomorrow's tomorrow is birth again.
Boats burn the bridge in the fens;
the time of the past returns to my life
and uses it.
Don't blame me for the letters that may form in the sand;
don't look in my eyes, you may see all the numbers
that stretch in my sky and colour my hand.
Don't say that I'm wrong in imagining
that the voice of my life cannot sing.
Fate enters and talks in old words:
they amuse it.
Hands shine darkly and white;
only in dark do they appear.
Bless the baby born today,
flying in pitch, flying on fear.
They shine in my eyes and touch my face
where I have seen them placed before;
don't blame me, please, for the fate that falls:
I did not choose it.
I did not, no, no, I did not,
I truly did not choose it.
02 Refugees (06:22)
(Hammill)
North was somewhere years ago and cold:
Ice locked the people's hearts and made them old.
South was birth to pleasant lands, but dry:
I walked the waters' depths and played my mind.
East was dawn, coming alive in the golden sun:
the winds came, gently, several heads became one
in the summertime, though august people sneered;
we were at peace, and we cheered.
We walked alone, sometimes hand in hand,
between the thin lines marking sea and sand;
smiling very peacefully,
we began to notice that we could be free,
and we moved together to the West.
West is where all days will someday end;
where the colours turn from grey to gold,
and you can be with the friends.
And light flakes the golden clouds above all;
West is Mike and Susie,
West is where I love.
There we shall spend our final days of our lives;
tell the same old stories: yeah well, at least we tried.
Into the West, smiles on our faces, we'll go;
oh, yes, and our apologies to those
who'll never really know the way.
We're refugees, walking away from the life
that we've known and loved;
nothing to do or say, nowhere to stay; now we are alone.
We're refugees, carrying all we own
in brown bags, tied up with string;
nothing to think, it doesn't mean a thing,
but we'll be happy on our own.
West is Mike and Susie;
West is where I love,
West is refugees' home.
06 After the Flood (11:28)
Continuing the story, humanity stumbles -
gone is the glory, there's a far distant rumble.
The clouds have gathered and exploded now:
axes shattered, there is no North or South.
Far off, the ice is foundering slowly,
the ice is turning to water,
the ice is turning to water.
The water rushes over all
cities crash in the mighty wave;
the final man is very small,
plunging in for his final bathe.
This is the ending of the beginning,
this is the beginning of the end,
middle of the middle, mid-point, end and start:
the first peak rises, forces the waves apart.
Far off, the ice is now re-forming:
poles are fixed once more,
water's receding, like death-blood.
And when the water falls again,
all is dead and nobody lives.
And then he said:
'Every step appears to be
the unavoidable consequence of the preceding one,
and in the end there beckons more and more clearly
total annihilation'
This is the ending of the beginning,
this is the beginning of the end,
And when the water falls again,
all is dead and nobody lives.
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Other reviews
By Rocky Marciano
"A sinister work, majestic, deeply moving and intense, one of the greatest masterpieces of progressive and music in general."
"Hammill’s compositional style, gothic, poignant, and poetic, reaches a luminous and extraordinary peak in this record."
By caesar666
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 and Lovecraft.
The gothic and delirious 'feeling', alternating with quieter and more intimate moments, has always hypnotized me and made the music of these grooves unforgettable.
