Just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed your channel since I discovered it. Hope you’re having a brilliant summer lads, looking forward to you’re return....
Enjoy your summer recess guys! Hope you aren't too long.. I've gotten quite accustomed to my weekly Wenton fix! I love your reviews and look forward to whatever comes next! Power on, my friends!
To be quite honest these guys are completely out of their depth in assessing this album. The title track and "Childlike faith in childhoods end" are lyrical masterpieces and showcase just how instrumentally accomplished the rest of the band are, they are certainly better musicians on this album and on the previous Godbluff. Personally, I think Pilgrims is an entirely appropriate song to open the album, persuading us that we are all on a journey of life and discovery with emotional pain and loss all being part of that spiritual journey "all of us, lovers, brothers, sisters, friends hand in hand....Shining footprints on the wet sand lead to the dream" stating clearly that we are all intertwined in the human symbiotic relationship. The title track is one of PH's best compositions. How can everlasting life in a world that can offer only transient happiness and fulfillment be considered as authentic? "Living, if you claim that all that entails is breathing, eating, defecating, screwing, drinking, spewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and down and ultimately passing away time which no longer has any meaning". Is it not better to live your life with an open-hearted acknowledgement of inevitable mortal death , while embracing both pain and pleasure on equal terms as part of that reality? The next two tracks are love songs essentially, but nothing is that straighforward with PH. La Rossa is a passionate adoration of the woman in question who also features in the PH album "Over" in fact the coda of this song was originally planned for the track "lost and found" until PH came up with something different. It's not just a love song, it's more of an unravelling of the ego, a dismantling of pride and self-absorbtion, towards the final succumbing to the object of his passion, in the most dramatic and lyrical way that only PH knows how, "burn me at the altar of the night - give me life!". Just try saying that to your girlfriend! "My room" is a companion piece to the previous track. This song finds the subject bereft and forlorn, like an addict in need of a fix. the passion that swept him away has now gone and left him abandoned. This song showcases the vulnerability of the ego after such passion, bewildered, lost and vulnerable. "Searching for diamonds in the sulphur mine, leaning on props which are rotten, hoping for anything, looking for a sign that I am not forgotten" lays the soul bare in self-ridicule, with " how could you let it happen" showing us that the ego is still alive, and attaching blame as required for its survival. "Childlike faith in childhoods end" is probably the albums most accomplished piece. It more or less evalutates the purpose of human existence on the planet. "Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man, with lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're grains of sand" just about puts us in our place in terms of the cosmos at least. "In the death of mere Humans Life shall start!" is the songs final statement leading us to contemplate what is beyond our mere human existence. For me Still life is a good contender for their best album. I personally prefer Godbluff, but that's simply because Godbluff is so good not that this is second-rate. Anyway, I hope I've now given the album the credibility its due.
Neat how summer recess coincides with the break between groups being reviewed -- and in the case of the Wenton Knave, nicely cleaving the Crim of the 80's from the 90's era. Seems y'all have planned this. Anyhoo, this is an album totally unfamiliar to me and I'm sure it will require the time between now and when you get back for me to decide if it's right for me ... Being that Sam loves it so much, perhaps you can give me a post office box # and I can forward him my copy of ALT ... Lol
Come on guys, neither of you guys seem to have let this bed in well enough to properly understand it. It takes many listens. Pilgrims is a lesson for any budding vocalist. Plaintiff, melancholy, strange, operatic, then suddenly strident and stirring, then howling "ALLOW ME THE DREAM IN MY EYE". What bloody problem with it. It's prog not Brittany Spears. Listen until it reveals itself. The sax at the end is highly emotional. Hammill at close to his rawest and that's saying something as NO ONE is more expressive. Flight maybe comes close. What does he have to do, open a vein????
Overall I think it's patchier than Godbluff. the parts that I like best, esp. "My Room" & "Still Life" are really more like Hammill's solo stuff (he in fact plays these songs on his own, and I actually prefer the live solo versions better. I still think you missed an opportunity to cover the band's progression by not reviewing one of their albums from the 2000's, which are very different and quite good, esp, the last one.
Just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed your channel since I discovered it. Hope you’re having a brilliant summer lads, looking forward to you’re return....
Thanks for that.
Enjoy your summer recess guys! Hope you aren't too long.. I've gotten quite accustomed to my weekly Wenton fix! I love your reviews and look forward to whatever comes next! Power on, my friends!
Great video fellas! How about reviewing some Marillion seen as how you mentioned them in this video? Script for a jesters tear is such a great album.
To be quite honest these guys are completely out of their depth in assessing this album. The title track and "Childlike faith in childhoods end" are lyrical masterpieces and showcase just how instrumentally accomplished the rest of the band are, they are certainly better musicians on this album and on the previous Godbluff. Personally, I think Pilgrims is an entirely appropriate song to open the album, persuading us that we are all on a journey of life and discovery with emotional pain and loss all being part of that spiritual journey "all of us, lovers, brothers, sisters, friends hand in hand....Shining footprints on the wet sand lead to the dream" stating clearly that we are all intertwined in the human symbiotic relationship.
The title track is one of PH's best compositions. How can everlasting life in a world that can offer only transient happiness and fulfillment be considered as authentic? "Living, if you claim that all that entails is breathing, eating, defecating, screwing, drinking, spewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and down and ultimately passing away time which no longer has any meaning". Is it not better to live your life with an open-hearted acknowledgement of inevitable mortal death , while embracing both pain and pleasure on equal terms as part of that reality?
The next two tracks are love songs essentially, but nothing is that straighforward with PH. La Rossa is a passionate adoration of the woman in question who also features in the PH album "Over" in fact the coda of this song was originally planned for the track "lost and found" until PH came up with something different. It's not just a love song, it's more of an unravelling of the ego, a dismantling of pride and self-absorbtion, towards the final succumbing to the object of his passion, in the most dramatic and lyrical way that only PH knows how, "burn me at the altar of the night - give me life!". Just try saying that to your girlfriend!
"My room" is a companion piece to the previous track. This song finds the subject bereft and forlorn, like an addict in need of a fix. the passion that swept him away has now gone and left him abandoned. This song showcases the vulnerability of the ego after such passion, bewildered, lost and vulnerable. "Searching for diamonds in the sulphur mine, leaning on props which are rotten, hoping for anything, looking for a sign that I am not forgotten" lays the soul bare in self-ridicule, with " how could you let it happen" showing us that the ego is still alive, and attaching blame as required for its survival.
"Childlike faith in childhoods end" is probably the albums most accomplished piece. It more or less evalutates the purpose of human existence on the planet. "Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man, with lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're grains of sand" just about puts us in our place in terms of the cosmos at least. "In the death of mere Humans Life shall start!" is the songs final statement leading us to contemplate what is beyond our mere human existence.
For me Still life is a good contender for their best album. I personally prefer Godbluff, but that's simply because Godbluff is so good not that this is second-rate. Anyway, I hope I've now given the album the credibility its due.
Neat how summer recess coincides with the break between groups being reviewed -- and in the case of the Wenton Knave, nicely cleaving the Crim of the 80's from the 90's era. Seems y'all have planned this. Anyhoo, this is an album totally unfamiliar to me and I'm sure it will require the time between now and when you get back for me to decide if it's right for me ... Being that Sam loves it so much, perhaps you can give me a post office box # and I can forward him my copy of ALT ... Lol
1:24 Heard that line before.
I believe it is soprano sax not oboe, not sure though now that you mention it.
I always love the reviews where Kev loves an album and Sam visibly does not. Hope you guys have a great break!
Sam is right about VDGG being angry prog... That's what VDDG were before Godbluff ans Still LIfe.
can you guys review Robert Wyatt solo album from 1974?
I second this request.
Rock Bottom
They gotta return to Canterbury!
Come on guys, neither of you guys seem to have let this bed in well enough to properly understand it. It takes many listens. Pilgrims is a lesson for any budding vocalist. Plaintiff, melancholy, strange, operatic, then suddenly strident and stirring, then howling
"ALLOW ME THE DREAM IN MY EYE". What bloody problem with it. It's prog not Brittany Spears. Listen until it reveals itself. The sax at the end is highly emotional. Hammill at close to his rawest and that's saying something as NO ONE is more expressive. Flight
maybe comes close. What does he have to do, open a vein????
Completely agree, pilgrims should be subtle, not in your face
I love Still Life . Brilliant album . VDGG at their best - and I think it is better than Godbluff .
Overall I think it's patchier than Godbluff. the parts that I like best, esp. "My Room" & "Still Life" are really more like Hammill's solo stuff (he in fact plays these songs on his own, and I actually prefer the live solo versions better.
I still think you missed an opportunity to cover the band's progression by not reviewing one of their albums from the 2000's, which are very different and quite good, esp, the last one.
*zooming intensifies*