REVIEW: Bevis Frond, Vavona Burr (Flydaddy)
- Don Share
Hating hippies has a long, silly history which goes back to our 1960's hardhat past, but it endures today in neo-punk bands and, even, arguably, in the recent spectre of Austin Powers. To a neutral observer, i.e., someone from Mars, there would be little comprehensible difference between someone who shaves all his hair off and someone who never cuts it, but of such stuff cultural and political niches are made.
Playing punk in the '90's is arguably just as regressive as being a psychedelic revivalist, but let's not be too harsh: there's nothing wrong with liking old Iggy and Sex Pistols, on the one tatooed hand, or Hendrix and Fairport Convention on another ringed one. Nick Saloman definitely leans toward the acid- and folk-rock end of the spectrum, but don't run away: he is no relic or throwback. His is a lucid, not fuzzy, logic; his music, like his wit, is pummelling. He pays no sludgy, slogan-infested homage to peace, love, or understanding - he just thinks those things are preferable to kicking someone's head in. And if he likes melody to go along with his amazing guitar soloing, he's less nostalgic for all that than Paul McCartney was when crooning about how his mother should know. As Saloman sings in "National Drag" on his new album, Vavona Burr, "You can blow your mind, IF you wanna get left behind."
Saloman knows all about the '60's, to be sure. He's old enough to have been there, if not quite old enough to have forgotten it all. As publisher of Ptolemaic Terrascope, he can set history straight without trying to simulate it in his music, which comes to us under the name, The Bevis Frond, and has for more than a dozen remarkable albums, every single one of which is worth hearing. Last year's North Circular, and before that, Son of Walter, were albums that almost put him on the map - but it may be that his sponsorship of the Terrastock music festivals, which highlighted bands like Olivia Tremor Control, and a recent collaboration with Mary Lou Lord, have brought him more attention than his own nostalgia-demolishing work.
Any signs of the Woodstock era are defaced in the album's opening "Frond Cheer," featuring, of all people, Country Joe himself; but the F-word here is, F-R-O-N-D, and the album never glances back again. If the Frond owes anything to the 60's, it's in those wig-raising guitar solos, but with Vavona Burr, Saloman at last achieves a good balance of short and long songs. The short songs are a welcome innovation. "Bulldozer" is a twisted little nursery rhyme: "Bulldozer, Bulldozer, when shall we meet? / When I come up to London and flatten your street."
The similarly self-explanatory "Couldn't Care Less," far from being a summery of love, is a kiss-off: "I don't want her latest photos, I don't want her new address / I don't want to know her reasons, I couldn't care less." The concision really underscores Saloman's wit.
The long songs are no less effective - they're great Boleros of excrutiating crescendos. The exasperation of "Begging Bowl," and the slashing slide-guitar of "National Drag" stand out, as does the Riders On the Storm Doorsiness of "Don Lang" and the arch, aggravated lyrics of "One Leg Sand Dance."
Long songs or short, Saloman suffers no fools. "Coming Down On You" is typically castigating ("As usual, you've been suffering from self-inflicted pain") but best of all is "In Her Eyes:" "She wakes up with a headache and a self-obsessive creep..." Best, because along with the invective, there's the great humanity that comes with fine alertness: "the people from her office seem to matter more and more..."
Someday years from now, amidst phony nostalgia for our age of greatly simluated rage and indifference, they'll wonder why The Bevis Frond wasn't better appreciated. It will be a sign that, almost uniquely, this music needs no hype, and the labels don't stick.
