Highlights: Eat My Words, Bite My Tongue, That Wasn’t What I
Said, Constantly Overhead, New Pen-Pal, Close To Me
While I remain a firm
Van Der Graaf Generator agnostic, Peter Hammill’s solo career has always seemed
strangely appealing to me. Particularly his inexplicable glam-punk-theatre-whatever
albums like Nadir’s Big Chance and The Future Now. Consequences may not offer that much bewildering, idiosyncratic
brilliance, but it’s still an effective late-period album from a man who has
retained it all: style, edge, vision.
Also, it certainly helps
that the record’s first side is flawless. “Eat My Words, Bite My Tongue” starts
like your typical Pеter Hammill number, cold, difficult and pretentious, but
then the second part kicks in – and suddenly there’s a great groove, there’s an
(almost!) articulate melody. And one song after another, one gruesome or pretty
guitar line after another, right up to the chilling piano ballad “Closer To Me”,
it all works, in a most scary, beautiful, mesmerizing way.
Sadly, the second side
is more about artsiness than substance, and, some spontaneous flashes of greatness
aside (come to think of it, Hammill’s greatest 70’s albums consisted of nothing but spontaneous flashes of
greatness), it is somewhat meandering and not particularly engaging. You’d
really have to be a die-hard admirer to get your teeth into such lengthy,
abstract tracks like “All The Tiredness” or “Perfect Pose”. The style is there,
granted, but only style.
Overall, though, I feel
impressed. For all its second-half flaws, Consequences
is prime Peter Hammill stuff, bizarre, grandiose and totally convincing.
7/10
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