#0082: Moby Grape - Moby Grape [***]

Once upon a time there was a band called The Beatles.  They were very successful.  Then once upon an every-year-after-that, some band would open up an album with the same guitar strummy and vocal harmony thing hoping to magnetise the screaming and the cash in their direction.

This is one of the better imitations and to be honest there's enough variety in the songs for me not to miss my ear infection but it's still a bit dull on the whole.

The Beatles were copied extensively in the sixties and ever since to varying degrees of abstraction slash annoyance depending your proclivities. Hey Grandma is a pretty good effort like a cross between Get Back* and that one that goes "you're making me feel like I've never been born"?  She Said I think.

So, thinking "that's it for the next 30-40 minutes", I sat back and waited for the assembly line clean guitar and four part harmonies to carry me all the way to the run-off but then Mr Blues came along.  Don't get me wrong, it's not a mind blowing track by any means, but with its almost funky groove it was an encouraging surprise.

Naturally, I perked up as I was taken thru Fall On You, an upbeat rock thing with some country twangs and chops that was remarkably pleasant and I started to feel a definite flavour with these chaps.

Track four (whatever it was called) sewed a seed of doubt.  A ballad at this point is a predictable change of pace.  "We're gonna take it down for a while now y'all, so feel free to smoke a jayjay and feel each other up."  It's all that Eversly Brothers slow bossa with contrapuntal melodies.  Nice, inoffensive and as forgettable as whoever that was you were feeling up just now.

With the ambivalently predictable but refreshing Come In The Morning acting as the crash cart, it's difficult to dislike this Keep On Running, hard soul, snare-on-the-one soundtrack stock for any movie with a road trip in it.  I was definitely still in it until Omaha kicks in.  

It's a frenetic and confused little number that much like the girls I wasted my affections on as a youth, it didn't seem to know what it wanted other than to be fast.  The percussion was noticeably arrhythmic and if that's deliberate then I don't get it. Suggest drumming circle people have a listen.  I don't get *them* either.

Someday is another slow one.  This arrangement of tracks may well not have been an established pattern yet but they were certainly sticking to it.  There's nothing intrinsically wrong with having ballads and nobody's a bigger softy when it comes to Nielsson or Carly Simon than my speckled, portly self.  But the slower ones here are lacking that special quality that makes couples want to adopt it as "our song".

Aint No Use, another forgettable one and despite the well crafted, layered guitar work it's dull dull dull lyrically and the gravitas he tries to lay on just grates.  It seemed like an announcement that we were officially into the filler section now until Changes began.  

I like Changes a lot and it's the main reason I will return to this album.  Bass players, keep an ear out for the arpeggios in the closing section.  I do like the way the bass is recorded in on this album.  It's very rounded and certainly present if not forward in the mix, but not dominant.

Lazy Me - there's something very Beefheart about the melody but thankfully that's as far as the comparison goes.  At the end it sounds like it's gonna go off into one of those experimental sections that last for days and who knows?  Maybe it did but the engineer had the decency to fade it out before the band heard it and severely pissed me off 50 years later.

The engineer again saves their bacon on Indifference, which is a pretty basic 12/8 played at speed that gives way to straight 4 for the chorus.  It's a neat trick I've seen enough times to no longer be impressed, but it at least saves the track from the tedium it first appeared to be aiming for.  The track finishes and does one of those resurrection endings - I'm soonest reminded of the closing track on the Foos Colour and Shape album*.  These endings need to be short or fucking awesome and our friend the engineer leaves just enough in there to once more remind us of Get Back.  

Which wouldn't be released for two years.  Huh.  

Ah, fuck it.

Altogether it's not too bad and some I actually would like to come back to at a later date, but it's not quite good enough for 4 stars.


[*] Mostly cuz I was listening to it a few days ago ahead of their Wembley gig, now cancelled due to Dave Grohl breaking in his leg falling off stage in Stockholm. Read more about Grohl's injury and his awesome response to the situation here.