Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
Roy Harper
Lifemask
(Harvest, 1973)
Britain’s grandiloquent folk warrior fears death. Jimmy Page lends succour…
Born with a rare congenital blood disorder, Roy Harper endured a debilitating illness in the wake of his 1971 masterpiece, Stormcock. Fearing the worse, Lifemask was genuinely conceived as a final bow, its glorious vinyl gatefold sleeve featuring its composer’s death mask and opening centrally to reveal Harper, very much alive, fixing the listener with one of his trademarked intense stares. Having made his arse-bearing acting debut the year earlier in Brit-flick Made, half of this album features material that appeared on that movie’s soundtrack (including the poignant Little Lady). But Lifemask also acted as a repository for Stormcock-era tracks like Highway Blues and South Africa (“a love song to calm the fears and wash away the horror and stain of apartheid”). Its centrepiece, however, is the funereal 22-minute epic, The Lord’s Prayer, featuring Jimmy Page on guitar which takes up the entirety of Side Two and which Harper described as “my last will and testament”. Thankfully, Harper survived Lifemask to enjoy a rich and fruitful career. Today, he is remains critical of the album, most particularly The Lord’s Prayer. “I do wish we’d added orchestration because it feels unfinished,” he told MOJO last year. In truth, Lifemask is perhaps fractionally a less challenging work than Stormcock. Nevertheless, it provides a further example of Harper’s unique take on acoustic music, showcasing his lyrical dexterity and vocal versatility, lush neo-classical aspirations and wry wit, and marking him out as one of the most singular voices of his generation.
Phil Alexander
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 01/04/2008
Further Listening
Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left (Island, 1968)
Roy Harper – Stormcock (Harvest, 1971)
Comus – First Utterance (Dawn, 1971)
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