Customer Reviews

This

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There is too much to say in praise of this very late (in Peter Hammill's career) album. It has verve, variety, volume, voraciousness and veracity. It has psychokillers, the life-inept, introspective parents and a 14 minute long meditation on the vastness and emptiness of Antarctica which is a very convincing evocation of the place. It is not one of his mellower albums, and more resembles "X my Heart" or "Roaring Forties" (both of which are also must-haves). I was worried that Hammill's age might have finally caught up with him when I bought this recording; I was very wrong. Age has brought experience and depth, not musical stagnation for him.

Peter Hammill has made some excellent music in his time, along with some that is not so excellent. This album is in my opinion well up there with his best. If he has a fault as a songwriter. it is a tendency to overstate good ideas, and drag things out a bit too long, but there is none of that here. Each song is absolutely to the point, with great tunes, intelligent lyrics and a consistently fantastic vocal performance. Even the longest piece on the record (the semi-ambient "Light Continent") is no longer (or indeed, no shorter) than required for the (presumably) desired effect. My only complaint is that I do not much care for the drums on the tracks that feature them. This is an otherwise sublimely produced record, but the drum sound is just wrong, the snare way too high up in the mix relative to the rest of the kit, and with a very "dry" sound.

This' is the fortieth album for which Peter Hammill has been responsible. It was released on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, after thirty years of music making. The seven songs (and three instrumental 'fragments') on 'This' mark a clear statement of intent to continue pushing at boundaries within the overall context of The Song. Many features of the soundscape will be familiar to those who have followed Peter's music over the years: shape-shifting changes of mood and temperature; lots of "how did we get here from there;" instrumental colouring by turns delicate and brutal; trademark washes of backing vocals; the juxtaposition of the tightly arranged and the purely improvised. Instrumental contributors are his long-term cohorts Stuart Gordon (violin), Manny Elias (percussion) and David Jackson (saxes and flute). The lead voice is, as always, insistently to the fore, with the passing of time and rites of passage remaining the central lyrical concerns. To some, Peter is barking mad; to others, an eccentric of genius. What is clear is that his appetite for the fray remains undiminished. Moments here such as the guitar-driven nastiness of 'Always is Next,' the languorous development of 'The Light Continent' or the piano-based meditation on parenthood of 'Since the Kids' offer proof that This has not stopped yet....