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PULL THAT THUMB (OFF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD) (EP)Red JasperProg Folk3.52 | 4 ratings |
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Warthur
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Though Red Jasper did put out a long EP (or short demo album) before this, the Pull That Thumb EP is the earliest
material of theirs that is easily available, offered as bonus tracks on the reissue of their debut album (Sting In the Tale) on
Angel Air. The title track comes across as a punkish affair, with Pat D'Arcy's saxophone providing an interesting twist and
Davey Dodds' vocals showing a certain influence from Fish. Given the strident political subject matter of the lyrics and the
prog sensibilities of the band, it's highly tempting to see this as a sort of faster, punkier take on Marillion's Market Square
Heroes. A similar approach is taken on Flagpole, which if anything is even punkier with only a tin whistle solo from Dodds
showing their folkier side.The B-side, though, is the 9 and a half minute England's Green and Pleasant Land? - that having been the title of the EP/demo album which preceded this, but this track didn't appear on there. As you might expect from the running time, it's an opportunity for the band to let their progressive side out, with whistle and mandolin from Dodds dialling up the folk influences on a long intro, whilst the main body of the song has Tony Heath offering a spooky keyboard backing as the tone shifts to something reminiscent of Grendel or Script-era Marillion. One of the more common ways I've seen people describe Red Jasper's sound is "Jethro Tull meet Marillion", and tracks like this really justify that, since it's pretty clear that the sound of early Marillion was a big influence on Red Jasper and, like Tull did with 1970s classic rock, they keep finding inventive ways of working folk influences and instrumentation into the mix. At the same time, there really aren't many neo-prog groups out there who were able to replicate the mixture of political outrage and melancholic eerieness which characterised Marillion in the Market Square Heroes/Script For A Jester's Tear period, but Red Jasper manage it adeptly with that closing track here, which suggests that what is going on here is not mere rote cloning but a homage which shows a deeper understanding of what made Marillion's music from that period tick. Red Jasper would go on to put out a string of albums after this, but feel like they were overlooked both by the mainstream and by much of the prog scene, perhaps having the ill fortune to have thrived in that awkward window just after the neo-prog craze died down but before the internet prog scene became a juggernaut. Yet on the strength of this initial EP it's clear that there was something special here, and giving these tracks a try has certainly got me looking forward to exploring the rest of their discography.
Warthur |
4/5 |
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