OFF: High Tide, Tony Hill, Simon House, Pete Pavli, Ade Shaw

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Stephan Forstner wrote:

> I've spent part of the weekend listening to 2 new releases from the High
> Tide camp: High Tide - Open Season, on Black Widow Records, via CDServices,
> and Tony Hill - Inexactness, direct from Woronzow, and here's a bit of a
> description of them.

        I don't have the High Tide one yet, but had to chime in on the
Tony Hill account...

        <High Tide review snipped>

> The Tony Hill release (Inexactness) has the following players:
>
> Tony Hill    - gtr, vox
> Pete Pavli   - bass on 3 tracks
> Ade Shaw     - bass
> Andy Ward    - drums
> Matt Kelly   - violin/viola
> Nick Saloman - gtr/organ/synth
>
> I went into this one hoping for more of the great guitar excursions which
> Tony Hill/Andy Ward/Ade Shaw had produced on the 2 tracks 'High' and 'Tide'
> for Acid Jam 2. So initialy I was a bit disappointed - here, only the 1st
> track and the 14-minute 'Of Foundries, Ships, and Steeples' follows that
> general pattern. Most of the rest of the pieces here begin to approach a
> standard-song-like structure - much more so than just about anything I have
> yet heard from Tony Hill. Still this is Tony Hill we're talking about and
> when I say approach, that means it's still pretty far from a pop song. Some
> of what makes me call them song-like are more vocals than usual, lyrics that
> seem to be a bit more staightforward in some cases, and a tendency of the
> musicians to find a groove and stay with it. High Tide often found a groove
> as well, but they never stayed with it long, jumping out and going off
> exploring, maybe to return to the groove later, or to find another groove
> altogether. That said, this one has definitely grown on me quite a bit, and
> pretty rapidly too. After discarding my preconceptions and listening to this
> for what it is and not what I want it to be, I'll admit that these are
> pretty strong songs and well worth getting. There are also plenty of High
> Tide moments scattered throughout - just don't expect to hear High Tide from
> beginning to end - something Woronzow has apparently anticipated by
> releasing this as a Tony Hill rather than a High Tide release, even if Tony
> Hill pretty much is High Tide like DB is Hawkwind or Lemmy is Motorhead.

        I really really like this CD. It stands a very good chance of
being the best album I bought this year, if we avoid the nasty idea of
having to rate the BOC remasters against them; let's say the best new
album this year. For me, anyway. I've been waiting for it since I saw Tony
Hill at the Bevis Frond Valedictory All-Dayer when he played `I Don't Want
to Talk', which at that stage had no vocal, second guitar or violin part
and simply took the audience's heads off at the neck. That song has lost a
little punch, but the lyrics make up for it. Tony's lyrics aren't complex,
but the phrasing is ever unexpected and often thought-provoking. It's
*not* High Tide, I agree, not as dark or heavy or as complex, but Tony's
guitar-playing is better than on the early High Tide stuff. At times it's
difficult to tell whether it's him or Nick Saloman on lead but on most of
the tracks there's a kind of clear point where Tony opens up that last bit
of the throttle and leaves Nick behind. The songs are at least good and
some great; the only weak point musically to me is the beginning of the
peunltimate track, `Of Foundries, Ships and Steeples', which is mostly
twin-lead jamming between two bits of quite weak tune. But that's all I'd
quarrel with, and the whole song is forgiven by an extroardinary passage
towards the end of the jam where Nick and Tony suddenly and unexpectedly
come out of their respective solo railway tunnels at the same time and
find they're on parallel tracks (if you see what I mean). I find it very
difficult to stop playing this album, which can be bad as it's not the
most cheerful thing ever.

        Other comments are that they gave Pete Pavli the three best tracks
to play on, which was wasted effort really as he doesn't do very much
with them and is certainly no better than Adrian on the other stuff; this
Matt Kelly bloke's all right but Simon House would have been better
:-) and that Tony is still winning all awards in the self-deprecating
depressed Geordie category. Apparently he has a touring band together
called Tony Hill's Fiction; I plan to investigate this further... Yours,

Jon

ObCD: Blue Oyster Cult - _Secret Treaties_ (remaster)
--
           Jon Jarrett                     "Two men say they're Jesus,
          (01223 514989)                   One of 'em must be wrong..."
   jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk              (Mark Knopfler)