Artist – Album: Alexander “Skip” Spence - Oar
Released: 19th
May 1969
Sounds Like: Insanity
The roots of this record stem from Skip Spence’s attempt to
smash a hotel door to pieces with an axe and subsequently do this same to his
Moby Grape bandmates Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson a la The Shining. Spence as
a result had to spend six months in a New York mental hospital (yep, that’s all!)
and put together the bare bones for this twelve song cycle.
The insanity permeates this album
in a much more subtle way than in contemporary recordings by the likes of Syd
Barrett. Songs such as ‘Broken Heart’, ‘All
Come to Meet Her’ and ‘Little Hands’ serve
to showcase the melodic genius still within his warped mind, but ‘Margaret/Tiger Rug’ and ‘Books of Moses’ demonstrate the mentality
of a man losing his grip on reality. The nine minutes plus of ‘Grey/Afro’
is a difficult listen, yet ‘Weighted
Down’ is perfect country pop. The fragile beauty of ‘Diana’ always brings a lump to my throat.
Skip Spence deserves the same critical and commercial re-evaluation
that Nick Drake and Elliott Smith enjoyed not so long ago, as this stands as a
fine example of depressed acoustic guitar folk to rival either of those posthumous
icons.
Albumaday... rating: 8/10
1. Little
Hands – 3:44
2. Cripple
Creek – 2:16
3. Diana
– 3:32
4. Margaret/Tiger
Rug – 2:17
5. Weighted
Down (The Prison Song) – 6:27
6. War
in Peace – 4:05
7. Broken
Heart – 3:29
8. All
Come to Meet Her – 2:04
9. Books
of Moses – 2:42
10. Dixie
Beach Promenade (Yin for Yang) – 2:53
11. Lawrence
of Euphoria – 1:31
12. Grey/Afro
– 9:38
Listen to ‘Diana’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVP-S8MNE0M
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