| Track: | Rating: | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. The Wave | | | | | |
| 2. Just Good Friends | | | | | |
| 3. Vision | | | | | |
| 4. Time To Burn | | | | | |
| 5. Four Pails | | | | | |
| 6. The Comet, The Course, The Tail | | | | | |
| 7. Ophelia | | | | | |
| 8. Happy Hour | | | | | |
| 9. If I Could | | | | | |
| 10.Something About Ysabel's Dance | | | | | |
| 11.Patient | | | | | |
| 12.Cat's Eye/Yellow Fever | | | | | |
| 13.Skin | | | | | |
| 14.Hemlock | | | | | |
| 15.Our Oyster | | | | | |
| 16.The Unconscious Life | | | | | |
| 17.After The Show | | | | | |
| 18.A Way Out | | | | | |
| 19.The Future Now | | | | | |
| 20.Traintime | | | | | |
| 21.Modern | | | | | |
Room Temperature: Live documents one of Peter Hammill's more unusual touring ventures. After the release of Out Of Water (1989), Hammill took to the road accompanied only by violinist Stuart Gordon and longtime bassist Nic Potter. The track arrangements which resulted were obviously "stripped-down" from the standpoint of instrumentation, though one might hesitate to call them "sparser".
Divested of percussive accompaniment, Hammill's vocals often convey even more intensity than usual. The lyrical motifs of isolation match perfectly with the stage setting, and the stability of PH's vocal technique makes the experience much more akin to a classical "art-song" performance than to anything within the conventional rock idiom. These factors save a few numbers which would otherwise have drowned in their own melodrama ("The Unconscious Life" comes to mind ...), and illuminate many of the more substantial tracks as well. The track listing may be familiar to some long-time Hammill fans, but this is clearly not an "oversaturate- the-market" release -- if the new arrangements aren't always quite as good as the originals, they still make RT:L a worthwhile purchase for the interested public.
Besides which, the track listing itself generally counts as a point in its favour. Too often, Hammill's solo albums tend to be burdened with one or two weak numbers which have little to do with the continuity of the release (obvious examples: throw-aways like "Polaroid", half-baked ideas like "Celebrity Kissing" and "Painting By Numbers", heavy-handed morality plays like "A Motor-Bike In Afrika"). By ignoring for the most part these elements of his past, Hammill manages to present a "best of artist" set in a new artistic light -- which is difficult to condemn. (Additional credit might be given for the fact that he doesn't play anything from Over, possibly the most overrated album of his career).
The album begins with "The Wave" (originally released on Van Der Graaf's The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome, for which a Tentative Review has already been written). The track commences in a remarkably (and impressively) slow manner, eventually reaching its climax in pH's intense developments of the beachside/isolation motif (melodrama isn't always to be shunned, after all). Hammill is arguably sounding more and more like a professional ars-lieder singer as the years go by, and this track is certainly no exception. A promising beginning.
The next track is "Just Good Friends" (taken from 1983's Patience, which this reviewer does not yet own; also featured on 1984's The Love Songs, which he does). This highly articulate track develops in a fairly elaborate way, with the "If I walked clean out of your life" section suddenly emerging from a more ambiguously impressive introduction; it may take time, but the power of this track should eventually reveal itself to interested listeners. A ballad in the non-perjorative sense, this is perhaps the first real indication of the special quality of this album.
Hammill returns to the first stirring of his solo career in the next track, "Vision" (originally released on 1971's Fools Mate, also featured on The Love Songs). Said first stirrings have sometimes been faulted for being slightly more commercial than his mid-1970s work, and the first verse of this track might actually cause some listeners to identify it as a perjorative-sense ballad; fortunately, it proves its worth with the powerfully sung chorus. The violin and keyboards have a good interplay as well.
Jumping ahead by 17 years, we then find ourselves with "Time To Burn" (from In A Foreign Town, 1988 -- making this the first "contemporary" piece on the album). The haunting keyboard introduction yields another excellent composition, with Hammill masterfully evoking a state of ongoing desperation through his unrelentingly dark lyrics -- perhaps "tense formality" might best describe this combination of articulation and despair. The late 1980s weren't always the best of times for progressive artists, but this track merits considerable praise.
Next follows "Four Pails". While the album from which this was taken Skin, 1986, Tentative Review already written) is not usually regarded as a high point in Hammill's career, this particular song was easily one of its "moments-worth-salvaging". This contemplation of the afterlife appears more intense here than on the studio version; the keys somehow seem harsher, as well.
Hammill then shifts to guitar [well, actually, the CD shifts to a track featuring Hammill on guitar, the album having been recorded over several different shows ... but let's not be too technical], for his essay on free will, "The Comet, The Course, The Tail" (from In Camera, 1974). Potter's bass somehow manages to be ominous and "folky" at the same time in this particular rendition, and the musical development (including an electric guitar at the end) is very much reminiscent of Van Der Graaf Generator. The melodrama is a bit heavy here, but the combination of vocals and violin makes it worthwhile.
The violin presence also benefits this particular version of "Ophelia" (from Sitting Targets, 1981, Tentative Review already written), which is otherwise not quite as impressive as the studio version. Hammill's intense wailing at the end is a strong point as well, and the value of the actual song is preserved throughout, but the performance seems a bit insubstantial - besides which, the water-gurgling sound effect at the end is absolutely terrible. Said gaffe aside, this track is good enough ... it just doesn't need to be here.
We then proceed to "Happy Hour" (from Enter K, another album that this reviewer doesn't have yet). Despite the somewhat hackneyed theme of the track, the lead melody here is quite good ... and the dirgelike "drunken" theme is performed well. A distorted violin solo counts as an instrumental highlight, and the "I'm falling" and "Put on the grease paint" sections count as strong moments for Hammill's voice. Heaven only knows how many times Fish thought of his own life through this track. Anyway ...
"If I Could" (originally from The Future Now, 1978, also released on The Love Songs) comes next. While the overused theme of a relationship breakup (again, this was written in 1978) drags the song's value down a bit, the singing and actual lyric-play are pretty good (particularly the concluding section, for the former). The violin and vocal interplay here makes up for a few deficiences in other aspects of the track.
Proving that Hammill's fans can be a devout lot, "Something About Ysabel's Dance" (from Out Of Water, 1989) gets a strong cheer from the audience upon its first notes. This track, one of the better moments from the 1989 album, concerns the survival of an ancient ritual dance pattern within Tijuana's local community, despite its bastardization through bar culture. Although written from somewhat of a "liberal outsider" standpoint, this is still a powerful track.
The first disc concludes with "Patient" (from Patience, bien sur), once again drawing cheers from the audience. Stuart Gordon emerges as a hero for much of this number, leading the track through a demented violin solo and a sublime lead section thereafter; his interplay with Hammill is notable as well. The song, focusing on hospital terror, has a certain 1980s flavour, but manages to succeed regardless. Potter's bass sometimes takes on a profoundly distorted essence (similar to John Wetton's lead on the first full-band section of "Larks' Tongues In Aspic Part One", actually). A very strong track, and a good conclusion for the first half.
A familiar violin signal begins "Cat's Eye/Yellow Fever" (from The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome). This track is performed in a manner faithful to the original, though somehow falls slightly short of its intense glory ... perhaps the rhythm of this track is so pronounced that the absence of a drummer is more notable here than elsewhere. Regardless, its still a powerful version, and a good inclusion on the album.
The same cannot be said of "Skin" (from Skin, obviously), the relative weak link of the trackflow. This is a half-decent art-pop number, and Hammill may deserve some credit for trying an unexpected song in his revised setting; still, the simplicity of its melody is noticeable in relation to the rest of the album, with which it does compare well.
The lyrics of "Hemlock" (from In A Foreign Town) are somewhat on the heavy-handed side (the term "military-industrial machine" actually gets used in one of the verses), but the track eventually manages to succeed anyway. This damning critique of modern media outlets features a winning "swallow hard" chorus, and the violin and bass performances add a fair degree of flavour to the track (the guitar plays the basic melody). An entire album of tracks like this might be annoying -- this one is worthwhile.
This is followed by "Our Oyster", Hammill's dedication to the Beijing students of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown (though it's actually quite a bit more subtle than one might expect, invoking a "world music" metaphor in conjunction with the ubiquity of state oppression). As per most tracks from Out Of Water, the music is quite ambient, creating an odd juxtaposition to the thematic material. The violin/keyboard duet is simple but effective.
As alluded to earlier, "The Unconscious Life" (from Enter K) nearly manages to drown in its melodrama -- the transition from the beginning of the track ("I am the captain of my soul") to the conclusion ("I am the ship's boy of my soul") could hardly have been reproduced in so unironic a manner. Still, the music (of which I would include Hammill's voice as a part) is top-rate, and the "something makes me nervous" section isn't quite as bad as the nautical-dichotomy outlined above. Those unwilling to put up with Hammill's most excessive moments might want to skip this one; the rest still has something of merit, though.
This version of "After The Show" (from Skin) is quite different from the album track. Clocking in at over eight minutes, the track begins with an ambient/atmospheric section which simply didn't exist in the earlier version -- the "backwards" string effects seem somewhat akin to Fripp's "Soundscapes" recordings (or should that be the other way around?), which perhaps explains the extremely Levin-esque bass line which emerges with the basic track. The violin and keyboard lines also create an impressive duet. I've long been convinced that this track is a much better song than the version on Skin would imply -- this rendition is better, to be sure, although one may wonder if it "overdoes" the track.
Hammill returns to Out Of Water again for "A Way Out" (which, oddly enough, features a keyboard tone seemingly identical to "Our Oyster" ... and is equally ambient in the musical performance). This musing on the possibilities of life-beyond-our-life could perhaps have been truncated a bit, but is still a mostly impressive number, made haunting by the starkness of Hammill's voice [though it must be admitted that this arrangement differs very little, if at all, from the studio version].
We then arrive at "The Future Now" (from the album of the same name), described by the All-Music Guide as one of Hammill's more popular numbers (though how exactly such would be measured escapes me). The original version suffered from the moral heavy-handedness that marks many of pH's tracks -- this version, through its more intense vocals, manages to avoid that problem to some degree. This seems to be one instance wherein the stripped-down instrumentation benefits the track.
"Traintime" (not, as far as I know, the Cream track; from Patience) then appears, its tense rhythm sounding oddly late-1980s-esque for reasons unknown. The train theme somehow serves as a memory for memory recall in this instance; pH's vocals and lyrics are once again fairly impressive here. A very intense number.
The audience was obviously quite pleased with the inclusion of "Modern" (a classic Hammill track from Silent Corner And Empty Stage, 1975). Hammill's account of destroyed civilizations (Jericho, Babylon, etc) juxtaposed with modern decay works fairly nicely; the bass effect is downright nasty, and Gordon's violin works as well as ever. I can't help but wonder if this is quite the classic that some might suppose, but it's still an easy highlight of the release.
Room Temperature: Live is, in sum, an important live album for Hammill fans. It may also have some appeal as a two-disc sampler set, for those unfamiliar with his work. Recommended, in either event.
(review originally posted to alt.music.yes on 17 Dec 1998)