Friday, 26 April 2013
Coming at the end of Ayers’ first stint on Harvest Records, his fourth studio album came with a new rhythm section (drummer Eddie Sparrow and bassist Archie Legget) and delivered some of his most accessible recordings, apparently intended to break Ayers to a wider audience (he was on the verge of switching management to John Reid, who was looking after Elton John's career at the time).
Given the fact that we’re talking Kevin Ayers here, you might baulk at that suggestion of wider audiences, at which point I’d ask how else you’d explain the presence of the British music industry's premier session vocalists (Liza Strike, Doris Troy, and Barry St. John) to flesh out the vocal sound and deliver a healthy dose of Dark Side Of The Moon to the proceedings.
Their presence, and that influence is obvious from the first chorus of the Beatles-tinged Don't Let It Get You Down and the chorus swells as it modulates through the chord progression. There’s a definite nod towards the pop end of the spectrum, a great horn section and an arrangement that delivers an almost perfect opener. Shouting In A Bucket Blues follows it up very nicely indeed, with tasty Steve Hillage licks under the vocal in a tongue-in-cheek exercise in intelligent pop song. Hillage soars, Ayers does a passable impersonation of Leonard Cohen and all’s well with the world.
That changes When Your Parents Go To Sleep which comes across as an exercise in writing something that doesn’t suit Ayers’ vocal timbre, which (presumably) is why he hands the vocal duties over to bassist Archie Leggett. It’s the sort of move that might well work in concert (give the front man a break territory, folks) but doesn’t make much sense here on a Kevin Ayers album. It’s not that the vibe doesn't fit with the rest of the album, the horns work fine and the previously noted backing vocalists are working the same territory as they have been earlier in proceedings, but this little Stax knockoff would probably have been better as a single B-side or as an Archie Leggett solo piece. It works, but doesn’t quite work here, if you catch my drift.