And Still More Again...

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From the opening bars of 1972’s Recall The Beginning...A Journey From Eden all was, however, forgiven. Welcome is a snappy little instrumental, the sort of thing you’d expect a soul revue to kick off with, nothing outstanding in itself but the playing is crisp and it grooves along nicely. Handclaps and ooh aah vocals lead into Enter Maurice, a wonderful little slice of doowop. Always had a soft spot for the old doowop, and there was a bit of a revival at the time. It mightn’t have been the stuff of the earlier albums (but then again Sailor featured Gangster of Love, which wasn’t a million miles removed from the vibe here). In the space of two tracks much of Number Five and all of Rock Love was forgiven. A false, finish, and there’s Maurice back again, little cries from his lady friends, and a slightly more chilling ending.

The tempo drops right down for High On You Mama, slinky slide underpinning a laid back groove. After the sonic mess that prevailed on the previous two albums (again, I suspect that the change in the producer’s chair had something to do with that) the sound is crisp and clear with warm vocal harmonies. Nice. Heal Your Heart starts with a loose-limbed groove, a harbinger of some of the things to come, and while it’s not my favourite track, I wasn’t skipping past it in a hurry. The Sun Is Going Down is nothing out of the bag either, but a pleasant enough listen. The end of Side One of the album sees the groove from Welcome back as Somebody Somewhere Help Me, an up-tempo blue-eyed soul number that brings the side to a snappy finish. While it wasn’t as consistently great as some of the earlier work the side could comfortably filed under Welcome Returns To Form.

The second side starts as warm acoustic guitar, whispered vocals, swirling strings lead into Love's RiddleWhat do you do when your love is untrue ... isn't an original question, but it’s a theme that has been mined consistently through the years. The start of Fandango continues the same feel before an up-tempo middle section lifts things out of the low down feeling that had prevailed for the preceding four and a bit minutes, which is quite long enough for that sort of thing to last. A couple of dramatic chords and we’re back to the whispered vocals. It’s a pleasant exercise in contrasts.

A swirl of strings and finger-picked acoustic guitar leads into Nothing Lasts. As usual with Miller’s lyrics the words aren’t too deep, but the message is stated fairly simply and if they’re a string of sentiments you’ve heard many times before, maybe that’s because they’re describing something that most of us have felt at some time. There’s a tasteful call and response element in there as well. The album closes with Journey From Eden, a ballad that works in some of the same ground Miller was mining as far back as Children of the Future. Again, while the lyrics aren’t going to end up in an anthology of Rock’s deepest poets, if the point of the exercise is to create something that people can identify with without travelling too far into navel-gazing Miller succeeded reasonably well for mine.

Like most of its predecessors Recall The Beginning.... didn’t have too much impact on the charts. I’d been sufficiently enthused by the album to line up for The Joker and Fly Like An Eagle when they came out, and the successes Miller had with the next couple of albums was enough to seal his future direction. Unfortunately, given events in London and New York in the late seventies, that wasn’t a direction I was keen on following.

© Ian Hughes 2015