Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.rock.progressive
Titolo: Il giudizio di un tale su Pawn hearts

Riporto un commento sul capolavoro dei vdgg. Dio (se c'è) conceda il perdono
all'autore di tali nefandezze.
http://starling.rinet.ru/music/vander.htm#Hearts
"PAWN HEARTS
Year Of Release: 1971
Record rating = 6
Overall rating = 8
Begone, ye foul precursor of worst prog excesses. Thanks goodness the public
weren't turned off by the genre back then.
Best song: MAN-ERG
Track listing: 1) Lemmings (Including Cog); 2) Man-Erg; 3) A Plague Of
Lighthouse Keepers.
Oh no no no no. Just like VDGG is prog's most controversial band, this is
the band's most controversial album - some swear by it as the best record
ever made, others condemn it as simply weird for the sake of being weird.
And I am certainly of the latter persuasion; if H To He was Hammill's Thick
As A Brick, then Pawn Hearts is undoubtedly his Passion Play. Except that
it's even worse, and makes me wonder if I've seriously underrated such
"masterpieces in comparison" as Yes' Close To The Edge and Genesis' Lamb
Lies Down...
But enough with all the comparison stuff. Really, I don't even know where to
begin with reviewing the last record of VDGG's "first" period, after which
the band split up and went on a four-year hiatus. Pawn Hearts is supposed to
be a concept album - about people representing nothing but pawns in somebody
else's supreme game. Hence the cool album cover with people enclosed in pawn
figures; but unfortunately, the cover is the best thing about the record.
The track listing consists of just three titles - two ten-minute long suites
on the first side ('Lemmings (Including Cog)' and 'Man-Erg') and a
twenty-three minute long suite on the second one ('A Plague Of Lighthouse
Keepers', further subdivided in ten different subsections - a trick later
nipped by Genesis for 'Supper's Ready'). But apart from 'Lemmings', where
certain lyrical elements do indicate some connection with the general
'concept', since ultimately the song seems to be about the decline of human
society and its being dominated by 'cogs' that set the human mass in motion,
anyway, apart from 'Lemmings', I simply can't make head or tails of those
lyrics. "'Unreal, unreal' ghost helmsmen scream/And fall in through the
sky/Not breaking through my seagull shrieks.../No breaks until I die/The
spectres scratch on window-slits/Hollowed faces and mindless grins/Only
intent on destroying what they've lost" (taken from the 'S.H.M.' section of
'Keepers'). This is quite typical of everything else on the album. The
lyrics on the second side are frankly impossible to follow - there is no
real imagery and no real atmospherics, everything is just a put-on. They
often come close to being ungrammatical, and at times Hammill comes
dangerously close to equalling Jon Anderson as the most shameless
graphomaniac in rock history. Too bad, as we all know at other times Hammill
can be good enough to earn the title of best prog poet ever...
But to heck with the lyrics. Where is the music? Pawn Hearts refuses to
present us with even a single memorable riff, with even a single impressive
solo passage, with even a single piece that would trigger one's emotions.
The few things on here that could raise an eyebrow or two, like Hammill's
usual vocal tricks and Jackson's weird sax playing, have already been used
to better effect on previous albums; a person previously uninitiated to VDGG
might find this album intriguing, but if you try to follow the band's
development in chronological order, this is bound to be a huge
disappointment.
'Lemmings', for instance, really tries, and tries very hard, to create an
apocalyptic mood, with swirling organs and saxes and Hammill's histryonic
singing abounding in spades; but who needs an 'apocalyptic' tune that has no
distinguishable melody at all? Blah. In a couple of places, Peter and Co.
slightly approach catchiness (the 'we have looked upon the High Kings'
chorus is moderately nice, for one), but mostly, this is just a band on
autopilot playing a pointless 'progressive jam'. In other words, yet another
number in the fine tradition of the abominable 'White Hammer'. Note, though,
that essentially the song sports the same escapist message that would be so
much more sharply stated in later VDGG creations (as well as solo Hammill
recordings) - life is cold mechanically-driven piece of shit that drives one
to the brink of suicide, but one can as well search salvation inside oneself
instead of stupidly ending one's existence once and for all.
'Man-Erg', then, takes its place as the best composition on the album, but
there's not too much to praise here - the main melody is nowhere near
memorable, and the only thing that's laudable about it is the atmospherics.
I mean, it can very well function as a relaxation piece, especially if you
edit out the silly mid-section. On the other hand, the 'silly mid-section'
has the best guitar parts on the album (again, contributed by Fripp), and
the sharp jagged sax/organ interplay occasionally kicks ass, so maybe one
might just as well leave it in.
And the 'Lighthouse' suite? Don't get me started on that one, I already got
a headache. I mean, I sat through it the required three times in a row,
clenching my head and trying to make sense of it. In vain. I fully agree
with the cynics: this is complexity for the sake of complexity and weirdness
for the sake of weirdness. Again, there's nothing but atmosphere here, and
I've had plenty of that stuff on Least We Can Do. The final sections of this
pseudo-masterpiece are okay - 'Land's End' is where the weirdness becomes so
overwhelming and the playing so sharp and angry (and Pete's vocals so
completely freaked out) that it's involving, and 'We Go Now' presents a
rather pleasant and gentle ending. But by the time you get to these last two
sections, you have to plod your way through barrages of noise, repetitive,
uninspired organ jamming, twisted, cold, mechanical, dissonant melodies with
not an ounce of sense or emotion, and barrelloads of unadulterated
pretension that even I find extremely hard to tolerate, and I'm a big fan of
Greg Lake, too. Having to listen to these twenty three minutes of prime crap
(and I'll never take these words back) for the fourth time in a row already
induces a fit of paranoia on me. Help me Lord...
Once again, I revert to the opening line of my review - it's a good fact
that VDGG were nothing more than a cult band even back then. With Pawn
Hearts, Hammill and company happily predicted the self-mocking parody that
progressive rock would evolve into in three or four years - this is the
natural precursor to Tales From Topographic Oceans (mind you, that TFTO at
least has excellent musicianship and some real melodies, unlike this one)
and to everything that made the critics turn away from their beloved child
and set their gazes upon the punk scene instead. And imagine that it was
recorded as early as 1971, when bands like Genesis, Yes, or ELP were only
starting to go as far as to twist their melodies in a completely
unconventional manner. Hmph.
I still give the album a rating of eight, if only for the boldness and the
audacity - this is by far the most "far out" record of 1971, and picking out
the little pleasant bits now and then (like the mid-section of 'Man-Erg' and
'Land's End') is not an unpleasant action by itself. But the disappointment
is still enormous - after the great riffage and the superb theatricality of
H To He I was really expecting something in the same vein. This is horror.
Do yourself a favor and stay away from this stuff in favor of some
concurrent Hammill solo albums; they're not really superior music-wise but
at least present a far more restrained and meaningful attitude towards the
lyrics, so as not to come across as total self-parody."
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 all'autore di tali nefandezze.
sì, il tipo lo conosciamo, esilarante, è lo Scaruffi del prog.
di perle come queste ne ha scritte a bizzeffe.


Lo conosci da tempo e non hai ancora provveduto a sopprimerlo (dalla rete)?
