BRINSLEY SCHWARZ: SILVER PISTOL (1972)
1) Merry Go Round; 2) One More
Day; 3) Nightingale; 4) Silver Pistol; 5) The Last Time I Was Fooled; 6) Unknown
Number; 7) Range War; 8) Egypt; 9) Niki Hoeke Speedway; 10) Ju Ju Man; 11)
Rockin' Chair.
This is where the Brinsley Schwarz formula
undergoes the last cosmetic modifications... and turns out to be a very polite,
accurate, and somewhat tepid formula after all. The songs are shortened,
cleaned up, straightened out, and made to completely conform to the standards
of folk- and country-rock, with no «progressive» ambitions whatsoever, and nary
a hint of hard rocking, either. So this time around you will never once confuse
this band with early Yes or late Steppenwolf, much as you'd want to. However,
you might perhaps confuse it with Wildlife-era
Mott The Hoople, and probably with several dozen other bands that had this sort
of sound at the time — Byrds-Band-style roots-rock, but without the uniquely
expressive features of either of these bands, and without a whole lot of
impressive songwriting, either.
New member, bass and rhythm guitar player Ian
Gomm, steps in here as a supporting songwriter, getting credits for four songs
(Nick Lowe has six), and there are also two covers of American singer-songwriter
Jim Ford, largely unknown but, apparently, hugely favored by Bobby Womack, who
would record a shitload of songs of his for The Poet and The Poet II
later on. The Jim Ford covers are actually distinctive — they are the two songs
at the end of the album that display the highest energy level: ʽNiki Hoeke
Speedwayʼ is a loose, drunk-sounding blues-rocker, and ʽJu Ju Manʼ is an
uptempo boogie piece that, in this rendition, kicks about as much ass as the
Grateful Dead when they were playing rock'n'roll. Which is not that much, as
you could guess, but for those who like
their rock'n'roll at low chamber temperatures, very stylish and tasteful.
Unfortunately, there is very little I can find
to say about these songs, and what little I can
find will not be flattering. As much as I respect Nick Lowe's songwriting in
theory, let's face it, it is just a wee bit embarrassing when you realize that
one of the most memorable tunes on the album, so humbly titled ʽUnknown
Numberʼ, is only memorable because it is built on a joint piano/guitar riff
that completely nicks (nick-lowes?) the
melodic line from Buddy Holly's ʽWords Of Loveʼ — and adds nothing of serious
value on top of it, so I guess the only reason Buddy's estate did not sue is
that either nobody knew who Nick Lowe was, or they knew they wouldn't get much
out of these guys anyway. In any case, this is just not a good sign.
The album's centerpiece is ʽEgyptʼ, a long,
slow, meditative ballad whose point is made perfectly clear in the first thirty
seconds or so — still it drags on for more than five minutes, with Bob Andrews'
solemn wintery organ lines and Lowe's tender vocals sustaining the atmosphere.
Some will find this deep and romantic, but it annoys me how manneristic the
whole thing is — they're handling the procedure with such exaggeratedly
exquisite finesse, you'd think they were afraid that just a little more strain
and the entire studio would crumble around them. It's so goddamn quiet that, in
fact, that at the beginning of the third minute you can actually hear a dog
barking somewhere near the studio — I have no details, but I'm 99% sure it was
just an accident that they decided to leave in, and good thing they did, because
it's probably the best bit in the song.
The new songwriter apparently still takes his
cues from Nick, because his contributions are largely just the same relaxed,
generic country-rock — pleasant, but mellow and with little in the way of
individualistically-rememberable melody. A typical example is the last track —
the instrumental ʽRockin' Chairʼ, which would fit nicely in any average
country-western soundtrack, but when I really
need my share of such music, as in, for a spiritual uplift or something, I can
always have the Allman Brothers' ʽJessicaʼ instead. That's Ian Gomm for you.
And Nick Lowe? I actually like ʽMerry Go Roundʼ a decade later when its verse
melody was remade as ʽManic Mondayʼ and its chorus melody was made completely anew.
You get the point by now — Silver Pistol sounds very nice, and it may even be the best
country-rock (soft-rock? whatever) album produced by a UK band in 1972, but in
that range, they did not have that much competition, did they? Well, some; pop
music historians will most likely be able to find far more blatantly rotten
examples. The sad truth, I believe, is that the band was still way too much
dominated by its rootsy American influences to develop their own style — and if
they did not want to take a lesson from the dirty ugly Rolling Stones, well, by
1972 you had the Kinks and Muswell
Hillbillies to show you just the
right way of merging American and British traditions. As it is, contrastive
perception forces another thumbs down.
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