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Roy Harper
Flat Baroque And Beserk
Stormcock
What Ever Happened To Jugula?
Science Friction
Thanks to a recent distribution deal with London's Cadiz Music, the back catalog of the legendary Roy Harper is finally getting a proper U.S. release. With much of his oeuvre' only available as imports, Harper has remained a bit of a cult figure in the states, but the restoration and repackaging of his work should see that swiftly change. Since his first effort in 1966 (The Sophisticated Beggar), the Manchester-born Harper has been cramming his CV—over the course of his five decade career he was managed by Pink Floyd's manager Peter Jenner, he sang lead on Floyd's "Have A Cigar," he starred in the 1972 film Made and he's collaborated with everyone from Paul and Linda McCartney to Kate Bush.
1970's Flat Baroque And Beserk is a stark and stunning collection of razor sharp folk. Produced by Peter Jenner, almost forty years since its release, the songs still shimmer the way they always did: for example, the searing "I Hate The White Man" and "How Does It Feel" are simply rousing. Meanwhile, the tender "Feeling All The Saturday" is quietly moving and "Another Day"—anyone remember Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel's moving reading of this number on Bush's 1979 television special?—is loaded with a rare musical finesse. That finesse, however, is slyly supplanted on the album closer "Hell's Angels," a full band rocker, which finds Harper backed by The Nice.
Recently championed by Joanna Newsom and long-regarded by the musical intelligentsia as his finest work, 1971's wonderfully repackaged Stormcock is a landmark work. Harper is at the height of his powers as a guitarist, lyricist and singer on this four-song album. (Don't be fooled by the brevity of the tracklisting—the four numbers here total almost forty-five minutes of some of the most sublime progressive folk music ever recorded.) "Hors D'Ouvres" with its ghostly background vocals is truly mesmerizing; "The Same Old Rock" (which features Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, billed as S. Flavious Mercurious) and "One Man Rock And Roll Band" have all the forked tongue poetic brilliance of Dylan (from the latter: "And withering in the galleries with eyes fixed on the door/Are who and you and me and thanks a lot") and the thirteen-minute epic romantic dreamscape of ""Me And My Woman," is decidedly moving. It's no wonder Stormcock once prompted The Smiths' Johnny Marr to proclaim it is "intense and beautiful and clever."
Released in 1985, What Ever Happened To Jugula found Harper finally teaming up with Page for an album's worth of material. Longtime friends, the two men had collaborated on several occasions—Led Zeppelin wrote the song "Hats Off To Roy Harper" and Page and Harper had even played the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1984—but on record they had only logged guest appearances with each other. Jugula features a full band with regular Harper cohorts like Tony Franklin (later of The Firm), Nik Green and Harper's then sixteen-year-old son Nick, but the album in many spots just features Page and Harper and the sounds of Ovation guitars hard at work. Flecked with synthesizers and light electronics, Jugula is an ambitious offering "Nineteen Forty-Eightish" is a nine-minute Orwellian riff ("Welcome to my nightmare/It's the one in which I always press the button," Harper sings); the David Gilmour-penned "Hope" is marvelous and the seven-minute "Hangman" finds Page and Harper trading licks in a bout of delicious virtuosity. Also notable: the quirky spoken word of "Bad Speech" which brings to mind Robyn Hitchcock and the cutting "Advertisement (Another Intentional Irrelevant Suicide)."
—Alex Green
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