H TO HE, WHO AM THE ONLY ONE

This album, most people have said so, is rather odd. And, according to my CD booklet, this is merely due to the group's alienation while writing. I find even stranger, though, that there is a (vague) concept about this album: loneliness. You may disagree on that point, I am indeed pushing a bit hard on the idea.

I do believe so because in all songs Hammill describes a psycopath (who compares itself to a lonely shark, pretty disturbing), someone who is trapped inside its own world, a paranoid tyrant (with support of one of the men who created 21st Century Schizoid Man... which gives plenty of credit), a broken heart dropped in a metaphoric island and a lost man in deep space. Seen that the group wrote the material in hermetic conditions, it isn't impossible that their music actually describes themselves. And that's why you are likely to enjoy the album. In spite of the dissonances, bizarre vocals and arrangements, it represents very human feelings (which, I'm afraid, sound more like VDGG than Genesis or Harmonium. Not that there's anything wrong with them! Both are a walk in paradise...), therefore identifying yourself will, perhaps, make you enjoy the album quite a lot.

And, IMHO, I do think it is better than Pawn Hearts, in which Hammill fully unleashes his romantic (and noisy) inspiration in A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers. Four and a half stars will do for H to He. ;)