Reviews
Artist:Peter Hammill
Album:Thin Air
Label:Fie! Records
Tracks:9
Website:http://www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk
Peter Hammill has been prolific as a solo artist, having released in excess of forty-five albums. To date I only own around sixteen of them, so I still have a long way to go for a complete set.
"Thin Air" is his latest, written and recorded between August 2008 and March 2009.
At his best, his albums are truly beautiful, but I must confess that a few of his albums can be a little angst-ridden for my my tastes. "Thin Air", though, is Peter Hammill at his best. He plays all of the instruments himself, and has added all the vocal harmonies himself, so it is truly a solo effort.
If you are new to Peter Hammill, "Thin Air" would be a good first album to cut your teeth on. The music is generally very accessible, being primarily vocals backed by a gentle piano or gentle guitar accompaniment, though there are bursts of quite heavy organ or electric guitar that raise this up above many other albums.
My only complaint about the album is the packaging. The lyrics are printed in white text against photographs of a cloudy sky, so can be a bit difficult to read. Luckily, the singing is very clear, and it isn't necessary to refer to the lyric sheet to hear what is being sung. (Though a Dictionary might help with words such as Weltanschauung.)
There are times, especially when he sings a duet with himself in two different voices, that the sound can be a little operatic, (maybe Gilbert and Sullivan), but Peter Hammill has never shied away from the dramatic. Like early Genesis, Van Der Graff Generator (PH's band) were on the Charisma label, and both Peter Gabriel and Peter Hammill have a similar dramatic feel to their music.
This album has a definite sense of valediction about it. It feels like it could be his swansong. Many of the songs on it are about his growing awareness of his own mortality. "The Mercy", track one, ends with the quote from Captain Oates 'I must go outside and I might be sometime'; "Your Face on the Street", (track two) ends with, 'Somehow in your disappearance I felt my own'. There's a recurring theme amongst many Peter Hammill songs of being in a relationship, aware that his partner is about to leave him. "If We Must Part Like This", continues this theme, but instead of boredom or betrayal, this time the impending split will be death. Not only is he aware of his mortality, he is filled with a fear of eternal retribution, and of spiralling down into some Dante-like Inferno.
No these are not happy songs, but they are incredibly beautiful, and well worth listening to. My favourite, "Diminished" has two distinct movements. During the first part, the vocals are accompanied by a series of notes trickling down the scales like rain on a window pane. Before one drop reaches the bottom another starts, and the result is quite hypnotic. The second part is purely instrumental. A single note slowly develops and changes, drifting through various background bursts of percussion or keyboard before slowly petering out: like a life, growing, developing, meeting interesting people, and then fading away.
There are two tracks, "Ghosts of Planes" and "The Top of the World Club" that very unusually share the same lyrics for the chorus based on the album title, "Thin Air". Cleverly, the words have very different meanings set in the context of the two different songs. "Ghosts of Planes" might seem a strange topic for a song: vapour trails left by aeroplanes. Another theme common throughout many of Hammill's lyrics is a state of being somewhere between life and death; sleepwalking, reflections, footprints, phosphorescence in the wake of ships, and vapour trails continues this theme. The thin air in "Top of the World Club" represents the difficulties in breathing with age.
A stunning album, which might even prompt me to go out and add to my Hammill collection.
Pete Bradley