Label: Parlophone Records (Japan), WPCR-15527
Style: Canterbury Scene, Progressive Rock, Progressive Pop
Country: Kent, England (16 August 1944 - 18 February 2013)
Time: 69:40
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 444 Mb
Is
this the second-greatest rock album featuring a banana on its cover?
Quite possibly. While Bananamour is not quite as important as The Velvet
Underground & Nico, it does boast the best song ever about the
German vocalist who appeared on the Velvets’ landmark LP. More on that
later.
Kevin Ayers’ last LP for the prog-oriented Harvest label,
Bananamour isn’t as far out and cerebral as 1970’s Shooting At The Moon
or as wonderfully weird as 1969’s Joy Of A Toy, but it has more hits
than misses and it contains perhaps the founding Soft Machine member’s
greatest composition. More on that later.
Bananamour-a fruity,
bilingual portmanteau word that suggests Ayers is not to be taken
totally seriously-starts with the woozily beautiful and ominous “Don’t
Let It Get You Down (For Rachel),” a ballad redolent of the Beatles’
“Dear Prudence” and “Carry That Weight.” Ayers’ feeds his voice through a
Leslie speaker while backing vocalists Liza Strike and Doris Troy
vibrantly burst to the fore with the title chorus. The carefree lope of
“Shouting In A Bucket Blues” is elevated by guest musician Steve
Hillage’s honeyed, psych-blues-inflected electric guitar, which
contrasts with Ayers’ lusciously lugubrious acoustic-guitar strum.
Bassist Archie Legget steps to the mic to sing “When Your Parents Go To
Sleep,” a brassy, wobbly legged blues-rock ballad about aching hormones.
His voice is like a less pugnacious Joe Cocker while the tune resembles
the Stones’ “I Got The Blues.” I’m not complaining.
Another
impressive guest, Soft Machine organist Mike Ratledge, illuminates
“Interview.” With Legget’s bass line getting to the funky nitty-gritty,
this is severe blues rock that cuts as deeply as Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh
Well.” Thankfully, this tune gets stranger as it goes, with Ratledge
going off into the stratosphere with some mindblowing improv. Another
Soft Machine alumnus, the inimitable Robert Wyatt, bestows harmony
vocals to the warm, intimate ballad “Hymn.”
Bananamour has a couple
of goofy tangents, too. “Oh! Wot A Dream” falls somewhere between Pink
Floyd’s “Pow R. Toc H.” and a Bonzo Dog Doodah Band ditty while
“Caribbean Moon” comes off as a British take on Nilsson’s “Coconut,”
with all the insouciant charm and faux-calypso vibe that that implies.
(“Caribbean Moon” appears on the US Sire edition, not the original
Harvest release.)
Now for the piece de resistance (thank you for your
patience)-“Decadence,” a chiming, slow-blooming drone-rock epic that
portrays the aforementioned Nico as a cold, elusive heartbreaker. A key
passage: “Fading flowers in her hair/She’s suffering from wear and
tear/She lies in waterfalls of dreams/And never questions what it
means/And all along the desert shore/She wanders further evermore/The
only thing that’s left to try…/She says to live I have to die.” Harsh,
dude. The song’s gradually accelerating and ascending cruise to the
stars (Legget’s bass is a spiraling, springy wonder) foreshadows soulful
British space-rockers Spiritualized. That is high praise, indeed. You
can bet legendary BBC Radio DJ John Peel loved Bananamour.
(Buckley Mayfield. August 3, 2020)
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