HOME

This is the first PH album after Fisher's departure: Chris Copping replaced him and Knights assuming the double role of organist and bassist. "Home" is, generally speaking, less colourful than "A Salty Dog" but notably rockier in places: PH's persistence at keeping its musical elegance is obvious, but it is also clear that the band consciously intends to go for a rockier trend, so it must come as no surprise that the opener 'Whiskey Train' brings such an explosive vibe - Trower's guitar shines like a forest in flames, while Wilson's drumming lets things swing in order to enhance the song's punch. None of the other up-tempo numbers in this album equals the aforementioned track's punch, but it would be fair to mention the raw sarcastic mood of 'Piggy Pig Pig', the happy-go-merry irony of 'Still There'll Be More' and the restrained frustrated angriness of 'About to Die'. regarding 'Still There'll Be More', a special mention has to go to the rhythm duo, which delivers a well-adjusted jazz-meets-R'n'B scheme for the trakc's strong development. All in all, the more prog-oriented tracks not only provide a solid balance against the album's rockier side but also manage to dominate its general trend. The Gothic 'Dead Man's Dream' delivers a sordid variation of the resurrection of the flesh in the shape of a metaphysical slumber in the mind of a recently dead man: the straightforwardly morbid nature of Reid's lyrics meet an appropriate sonic equivalence in the Spartan main motif, ceremoniously introduced by the piano and soon enhanced by the organ (moving from Romanic to Baroque to Romanic again), while Wilson's solid drumming helps to increasingly build up the song's bizarre air of drama. It sure scared John Peel speechless - he asked the band not to play this particular song for one of his BBC radio shows due to its scary nature, and I have to agree that the topic is scary, but Reid's lyrics and the musicians' work made it beautiful in its own terms. There's lots of songs that deal with death or include lines that allude to death wish in this album. The ballad 'Nothing that I didn't Know' sounds like something out of a crepuscular western from the late 60s-early 70s: the acoustic guitar washes take center stage in order to create an intimate, elegiac mood, and later on, the harmonium chord progression motif displays a sense of softly vanishing into nothingness. This is desolation under a classy guise. 'Barnyard Story' is a brief piano-vocal song (except for some organ layers in the last half) that also portrays some of the recurring dark mood of the album. The penultimate track, 'Whaling Stories', is the most complex one, and also one of the definitive classics of PH's entire career. The distribution of varying sections fluidly linked to each other and the orchestral effect created in many passages make it a genuine progressive gem (later on, it would meet its most solid expression in PH's 1972 live album with the Edmonton Orchestra, but this studio original is also a gem): Trower's solo is one of his most emotionally charged inputs in the band's repertoire, and similarly to 'The Dead Man's Dream', Wilson uses his drumming mostly as an enhancer of drama and intensity. Once the introspective 'Your Own Choice' has reached its closing fade-out, you can tell that this album has managed to maintain PH's archetypical distinction, despite the line-up changes and the irruption of new refreshing airs. I rate this album somewhere between very good and excellent, with a leaning toward the excellent.