Peter Hammill
Album: Consequences
Label: Fie
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.sofasound.com

Peter's 30th solo studio album is a natural followup to Thin Air, itself reckoned by many fans to be one of his best. It presents ten typically jittery and compelling new original songs which, while unmistakably Hammill in sound and style, find him expanding the aural envelope even further than on Thin Air. This is noticeable straightaway in the areas of production and creative instrumentation, with a solid, linear base as anchor for a texture that shifts and embellishes around the central focus, this acting as a concise and memorable frame for Peter's voice. The often disturbing variety of textures and sonic images is a constant stimulant, with scoring that provides imaginative surprises round each corner. (And it's done with "real" instruments rather than an over-reliance on outmoded synthy keyboard tones, I'm glad to hear: acute and well-pointed use of electric guitar, piano, bass and organ, with unexpected garnishes of percussion…)

Peter's distinctive voice necessarily remains centre-stage; it possesses its own special intimacy and closeness, but that closeness doesn't shout at you, instead it involves you the listener, keeping you drawn in. Some quite luscious vocal parts and harmonies on Bravest Face and That Wasn't What I Said, sometimes quite theatrical in their impact, help to bring out the drama and mirror the internal dialogue being carried on through the lyrics. (Tho' if I said I heard echoes of Smiley Smile-era Beach Boys or even classic Queen, you might think me fanciful…!)

As for the songs themselves, they're a really strong bunch - and just because they're thought-provoking and intensely haunting. Their structures are unconventional, episodic rather than deliberately accessibly formatted, and this feature provides constant interest that counterpoints the often challenging yet highly percipient nature of the thoughts and ideas being expressed. The first three tracks form a logical sequence that examines the obvious implications of consequences with regard to the use of words, and the associated themes of mis-communication and misinterpretation; Constantly Overheard has significantly sinister overtones and undertones that offset the cordially layered backdrop. The theme of stalking is a natural progression from these thoughts, and New Pen-pal and Closer To Me play almost obsessively with our emotional responses to this phenomenon.

Arguably, we arrive at the disc's emotional epicentre with All The Tiredness, an eerie stasis out of which the only direction to proceed is to the fractured, fracturesome stance of Perfect Pose, all the supreme (and equally obsessive) effort to achieve which produces a result with which we're all too familiar. Peter's ability to observe, then examine, ordinary personal situations and evaluate their complex emotional states has rarely been more persuasive than on this latest album, I feel, and by the time we reach A Run Of Luck's state of curiously resigned desolation we've experienced ominous, discomforting fragments of life (Scissors) in a new light and by force of necessity we've put on our Bravest Face. What's been going on outside the frame of personal experience is - and has been - often every bit as important as what's been happening inside, however elusively it's been perceived.

So, after just a few weeks of replaying Consequences, always with a reaction of consistent satisfaction and direct and positive impact, I'm tempted to place it above even the abundantly impressive Thin Air in the Hammill canon; I'd say it certainly ranks among his finest albums, not least for its high level of artistic achievement through maturity of thought and exceedingly well-considered musical settings.

David Kidman