ARGENT: RING OF HANDS (1971)
1) Celebration; 2) Sweet Mary;
3) Cast Your Spell Uranus; 4) Lothlorien; 5) Chained; 6) Rejoice; 7) Pleasure;
8) Sleep Won't Help Me; 9) Where Are We Going Wrong.
Evolution happens. Where Argent could, more or less, be seen as the last true Zombies album
in spirit, Ring Of Hands represents
the crucial bend after which you no longer see the train (might still hear the
echo). As the new band gains momentum and ensures its own stability, two new musical
directions are emerging. Russ Ballard is now officially the «rocker» of the
band, leaning towards a louder, sweatier, more aggressive sound — an early
brand of «arena-rock». Rod Argent, on the other hand, is taking his cue from
contemporary progressive rock, exploring the world of complex structures and
lengthy keyboard solos. Counterbalancing all of these tendencies is Chris
White, retained as resident songwriter and contributing as many good old pop
hooks as can withstand the pressure of Ballard's Big Buffalo Riffs and
Argent's Extended Toccatas and Fugues.
Does it work? How could it not work, when so
much talent and freshness is involved? At the risk of occasional bits of
corniness and silliness (yes, ʽCast Your Spell Uranusʼ is an unlucky title, and
naming your songs after Tolkien toponyms never
helps in the long run), the album as a whole is excellent, with nary a single
genuine misstep. Neither Ballard's hard rock nor Argent's progressive
experiments sound forced or boring, and almost every single song shows just how
much fun it must have been for Rod to do this — he attacks the keyboard with
the verve of a teenager attacking a brand new video game. There is no
condemning Ring Of Hands, even if
you don't like it: these guys are clearly excited, and an excited Rod Argent is
beyond condemnation.
The troops are still marching behind hippie-idealistic
banners: ʽCelebrationʼ opens the proceedings on an exultate-jubilate folk-rock note that might just as well open a
Crosby, Stills, & Nash record. But in reality, the song is not at all
typical of the rest of the album: round-the-campfire idealism only serves as a
formulaic bait, upon which the artists launch into either more personal or more
heavily «intellectualized» ventures. It does stress the album's relative
diversity, though: folk-rock anthems, heavy rockers, blues stylizations,
romantic ballads, keyboard pop-sonatas — the band casts its net quite far and
wide, even despite its main songwriters already patenting their own established
songwriter styles.
Ballard is, of course, the weaker link here. He
is not only incapable of matching Argent's talent and experience as player and
composer, but also shows less taste, which would eventually doom the band. Most
unpleasantly, he tends to overscream and kick up too much pathos where a slightly
more tongue-in-cheek attitude wouldn't hurt (was there no one in the studio to
let him know just how ambiguous the word URANUS
may sound when it is made into a chorus hook?). Which, somehow, still does not
prevent ʽUranusʼ from kicking some ass, mostly due to Argent's piano and organ
parts that genuinely rock harder and sharper than Ballard's vocals.
Russ fares somewhat better on the more
guitar-driven ʽChainedʼ, with a well-constructed solo and interesting work on
the harmonies; but his best contribution is probably ʽWhere Are We Going
Wrongʼ, which manages to end the album on a frenzied / paranoid note, in a
disturbing manner that contrasts impressively with the rose-colored start of
ʽCelebrationʼ. With psychedelic choral harmonies, an R'n'B-ish drive, fluent
guitar and piano solos (Rod brings out his fastest jazziest licks for the
latter), it's one of those «intelligent rockers» that requires a little sinking
in to take full effect, but don't miss it.
Of the Argent/White collaborations,
ʽLothlorienʼ is the most easily notable, if only due to the eight-minute
length. Although the title may look provocative, the whole thing is really not
so much a Tolkienist fantasy as it is a pretext for launching into some
keyboard-dominated jamming: for the first time ever, Mr. Argent feels himself
fully free to engage in anything he likes, switching several instruments along
the way and gliding from Bach into Art Tatum without effort. For the record,
Tolkien's Lothlorien is the last
place I would be associating with this kind of music, but it's nice to know J.
R. R. can be so different for different people.
One should not miss ʽRejoiceʼ, either, a
McCartney-inspired ballad with a sprinkling of gorgeous falsetto vocal hooks
framed with even more Bach quotations (organ sound this time); ʽSleep Won't
Help Meʼ, where Rod seems to be inspired by Ray Manzarek's solo on ʽRiders On
The Stormʼ, playing highly similar patterns on the same electric piano
(unfortunately, like any other «tribute», this one is emotionally inferior,
even despite Argent's irrefutable technical superiority over Ray); and even the
blues-boogie shuffle ʽSweet Maryʼ, potentially generic, boring, and taking one
too many cues from ʽThe Night Time Is The Right Timeʼ, is lifted off the ground
by an exquisitely tasty Ballard solo. (They never did this kind of material no
more, which is a pity — some old-school blues-rock instead of Ballard's
lumpy-leaden-metal on subsequent albums could actually help to enliven them).
In the end, Ring Of Hands is probably the best «proper» Argent album — only the
debut hits me emotionally in a manner truly comparable with the best of the
Zombies, but Ring Of Hands explicitly
tells us that this band is not the Zombies,
and, well, we'd have to understand that: they didn't change the name for
nothing, after all. And as far as a non-Zombies Rod Argent-led band is
concerned, Ring Of Hands is tops,
with a fair balance between simplicity and complexity, a coherent attitude and
plenty of diverse ways to realize it. And, historically, it is a good example
of a great band doing its finest work before
becoming destroyed by commercial success — Ring
Of Hands didn't sell, and in this particular case of this particular band, we
can only thank God for that. So, thumbs up.
Check "Ring Of Hands" (MP3) on Amazon
Actually, the Doors' last album came out several months after Ring of Hands, so Rod cannot have been inspired by 'Riders on the Storm'.
ReplyDeleteOops. An eerie coincidence, then.
DeleteEither GS is a sissy or there is no hardrock on this album. Excellent play by Rod Argent on this album. It could have used some serious butt kicking though. Only Where are we going wrong (still too jazzy and not crunchy enough to be called hardrock) qualifies in that respect.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard the music, but I will say this: the god-awful cover art may have been a major factor in its lack of sales. What exactly is it supposed to depict?
ReplyDeleteThe "Ring of Hands", I suppose, but I agree, it doesn't make much sense.
ReplyDeleteI guess it's sort of a transitional album between the original Zombies/Argent sound and what was to come, but it still maintains enough of the former. "Celebration", "Lothlorien" and "Cast Your Spell, Uranus" are the nods to the 60's past, and "Chained" and "Sweet Mary" (which bombed as a single because radio programmers thought the "Mary" here was the same as that in "Along Comes Mary"!)seem to foreshadow the hackdom of "Hold Your Head Up", but they are 100 times better.
I haven't yet read anything that would convince me to investigate Argent beyond this point. Anybody want to try and change my mind?
Bob