LIFEMASK

Lifemask earmarks Roy Harper's sixth studio release. It is a richly woven album consisting of both progressive and folk influences. The album opens with the emphatic ' Highway Blues'. This is a dark song and a hard act to follow for the rest of the album because it is so darn good. Both Roy Harper's and Jimmy Page's guitar work is excellent on Lifemask but seriously ' Highway Blues' has to be played very loud to be fully appreciated. ' All Ireland' follows and is a solemn ballad led by Roy Harper's distinctive vocals. ' Bank Of The Dead' features Jimmy Page again as does the epic long track ' The Lord's Prayer'. Harper and Page combine so convincingly on guitars, it is little wonder they played live occassionally also. ' South Africa' is another highlight on Lifemask, a love song, but justafiably anti apartheid nuances throughout. This is not Roy Harper's best studio album but still highly recommended for any progressive folk enthusiasts. It is also worth mentioning that Peter Jenner of the Harvest label/Pink Floyd fame produces Lifemask. 4 stars!

3.5 stars really!!!

Generally seen as one of Harper's most definitive work, Lifemask often gets the nod from progheads, because of the side-long "epic" (if it can be called that), although this writer thinks differently, even if the present is indeed among Roy's best work. After the career jumping FJO, the superb (and near perfect) Stormcock, the intimate Flat Baroque & Bezerk, Lifemask makes the perfect square. A four of a kind in row that few had managed before him. Of course this album, with its arresting artwork has also a five star prog line-up with Page, The Nice's Davison, one of the Broughton bros and more.. can only give more fuel to the proghead's pledge.

Highway Blues is just a tad more than a blues and Page's interventions are solid. The All Ireland track is a real stunner, one of those spine-chilling moments with its dramatic texts, too bad it's a bit short. Equally beautiful is Little Lady, but this one overstays its welcome, because a bit too repetitive. Bank Of The Dead brings you back a bit to FJO's better moments, Page and Harper making a fantastic duo. South Africa is another highlight filled with delicate and delicious guitars.

You've all been waiting patiently for the side-long "epic" called Lord's Prayer. Well, it sucks big bones!! At least the title does to this old confirmed pagan. It starts with Harper's spoken performance of one of his poem, much like Jim Morrison would in American Prayer two years before or the beat poets (Burroughs, Ginsbergh and others) would do in counter-culture happenings in jazz clubs a decade before. When it's finally over, Roy starts singing (Modal Song) with only his guitar dishing its arpeggios under waves of echoed Harper sung lines. Lovely stuff really!! Slowly the other musicians joins, but this is only really only noticeable once Page's electric guitar gets into the game, the song getting very impressive. Harper's voice is soaring high above the rest of the music, but the song keeps unravelling its mysteries and haunts you further. Great stuff

Yes, Lifemask is one of Harper's strongest albums, one that can top a career, but Harper has more than one trick up his sleeve and Lifemask is not the only ace in his poker hand, but one of three.

Four-and-a-half stars. STORMCOCK and LIFEMASK are almost companion pieces. For most, these two are the essential releases by Harper. I don't want to argue with that, especially since neither album has any throwaway tracks (unlike subsequent releases), but I would suggest that *some* newcomers to Harper might want to start with his other 70s albums, which usually contain shorter songs and a more varied approach. Many might buy STORMCOCK or LIFEMASK and figure Harper's not for them (let's face it, these are difficult albums, and take time and committment to appreciate), when if they had started with something more accessible (that is, any of his other 70s releases), they might find a way into Harper's wondrous musical world.

It's hard to argue which is better, STORMCOCK or LIFEMASK . Yes, LIFEMASK's closing "Lord's Prayer" isn't for anyone (I wish too that I could skip the long poem at the beginning); at the same time, STORMCOCK 's opening song "Chef d'oeuvres" is a little weak compared to the rest of its songs (as well as compared to LIFEMASK's opening salvo "Highway Blues").

Roy's follow-up to the magnificent Stormcock is a great album in its own right - for the most part, but it does have a significant misstep, closing piece 'The Lord's Prayer.' It's worth saying that I come back to this album nearly as much as Stormcock but it's for the first half not the wandering epic. But more on that later.

Instrumentally, Roy has expanded the palette on Lifemask to include the backing of a full band for some of the pieces, along with percussion, flute and a little synth - featuring perhaps most prominently on the excellent stop-start opener 'Highway Blues.' Probably the stand out piece, it's also available in an arguably superior live take on Flashes from the Archives of Oblivion but here it's still a great opener with a sense of restless energy and suspense that is finally resolved in Roy's wails to 'please give me a lift.'

'All Ireland' is a sombre, country-influenced strummer, brief and bleak: "Goodbye free Ireland / Try again soon / The tommies and sirens / Are wolves in the moon / Devouring your children / With the law's empty spoon" and is followed by 'Little Lady' which is not as successful. Not unpleasant, it simply doesn't stand out like other pieces, such as 'Bank of the Dead' which features old friend Jimmy Page on guitar (though in the liner notes Roy admits he had to try and redo some of Page's parts due to an accident with a magnet) and covers thematic territory familiar to those who are aware of Harper's views on the perils of the modern world. It's blessed with Roy's ever-effective riff work and a cynical vocal.

Next comes a beautiful love song, with echoes musically from 'The Same Old Rock' but which has more in common with one of his songs from two years prior, 'I Hate the White Man,' and is actually intended for South Africa. It is the last moment of brilliance on the album, as the next piece, despite some nice lead work from Page toward the end, is a little too meandering for my taste.

"I had always regarded Tim Leary as half a charlatan, Allen Ginsberg as a quarter, and Byron as a smidgin or two. My heroes were Shelley, Kerouac, Miles Davis and Keats...In the light of these admissions, it may not be too difficult to see where the major work on 'Lifemask', 'The Lords Prayer' is coming from... The song catalogues spontaneous interpretations of how we are inter-acting with the planet. It was never aimed at mass market and is just a poem for friends and kindred spirits."

The above quote from Roy's website may well contextualise the piece. Even with some a fine vocal performance from Roy in his upper register, the piece suffers from what sounds like a 'throw in a bit of everything' approach and ends the album on a (compositionally) down note. Lyrically, the Beats' influence is clear on the poem that opens it, rhythmically certainly, and also through the playful studio trickery it employs. The song ends on a sincere plea:

is it too late/ to create/ a world made with care/ Is it there/ or fleeting/ here today and gone/ tomorrow's child/ looking so wild and free/ are we a choice/ with no voice/ can it be/ great heart, mean streak/ spare part speed freak/

If the closing 'Lord's Prayer' wasn't unsatisfying to me, I'd have no qualms giving Lifemask four stars. What is superb about it remains superb, but with a side long piece pulling it down, and something that represents half of the entire album, it's three stars only. Still one of my favourite of Roy's but not a track-for-track knock out. His progressive approach to folk music, or simply music in general, is on display, but his shining moments here appear to be gleaned from the moments where he remains a little more conventional.

Harper's 1973 studio album is often considered one of his early essential as it directly follows his celebrated Stormcock album released in 1971. While staying with the long winded folk formula of Stormcock on this album's centerpiece, titled "The Lord's Prayer", old Roy took his first tentative steps into full blown prog rock by subtlety adding bass and drum accompaniment to several tracks in what sounds like a half-hearted exercise. Specifically on the opening track "Highway Blues", which often comes off better in concert with just Roy's acoustic guitar as accompaniment. The same treatment is also added to "The Lord's Prayer". Psychedelic treatments to Roy's backing vocals also helps to keep up the interest and tension of this long verbose song that starts off with a spoken poem introduction. That "The Lord's Prayer" is still fascinating to me some four decades after first hearing it can only be credited to Harper's impassioned vocals and Jimmy Page's tasty guitar leads that punctuate the song. Indeed, it is worthy to be the album's centerpiece and album closer. Equally sublime is "South Africa" which is a love song to the country that is unique in it's delivery and doesn't come off as pretentious, no matter how much Roy wears his anti-apartheid passion on his sleeves.

Less successful are "Northern Island", "Little Lady" and "Bank of the Dead", which take most of the album's first side. Concerning these, Harper fails to maintain his sense of sincerity and interest so the songs come off as either trite or plodding. I personally find that Lifemask follows both Flat, Broke Berserk, from 1970, and Stormcock not only chronologically and in also being successful artistically. However, I can't imagine listening one of these albums without the other two, so I would have to agree that even with it's faults Lifemask is also another early Harper essential for his diehard fans. So, 3 stars for this album for the song's that work.