Political Prog

                                                           Review: Wigwam – Being (1974)

Being is the fourth studio album by Wigwam, founded in Finland in 1968.

Wigwam’s first three albums contain many great moments, but each of them is rather uneven as a whole.

Being transforms all of this into a full set of one exquisite composition after another, forming a very coherent whole. Being is a theme album, but it represents the section of concept albums where the actual theme is very difficult to sum up in a few words. It is a kind of study of the clashes between different social classes and ideologies. With a strong sarcastic and black humour touch. Some of the lyrics, which mocked communism, were rejected by the Love Records label, which had a very strong left-wing slant.

The mastermind behind the whole concept of Being was keyboardist/vocalist Jukka Gustavson, but he did not write and compose all the songs on the album alone, but shared the workload with bassist Pekka Pohjola and keyboardist/vocalist Jim Pembroke, who wrote the songs according to Gustavson’s loose instructions. Some of the compositions had been written before the concept of Being was conceived, but Gustavson then modified them as best he could to make them fit better into the whole.

The lyrics on the resulting album are very cynical and dark. Mankind, destroying itself and its environment in its stupid greed, is given little mercy in Gustavson’s lyrics. Pembroke’s ’Petty-Bourgeois’, ’Maestro Mercy’ and ’Marvelry Skimmer’ at least lighten the atmosphere a little.

The darkest track on the album is Pohjola’s ”Pride of the Biosphere” where Gustavson’s lyrics have a military chaplain telling stories in a squeaky voice about how officers used to rape the waitresses in a military canteen and then shoot them. In the background, the devout organ theme of the Pohjola plays in sarcastic contrast. Pohjola later recycled the same melody in a less haunting mood on his own album Keesojen lehto (1977).

Being was a major project for Wigwam, carefully built over the course of a year. Although the actual studio time was only about a month. Which was a lot for a Finnish rock band at that time. Usually, Finnish rock albums were recorded in a week or even less.

Wigwam had already taken clear steps towards more progressive music with their previous album Fairyport (1971) and this trend is only confirmed with Being. The songs are more complex and the instrumental performances more virtuosic.

However, like many other progressive bands, Wigwam didn’t set out to build songs of colossal length, but Being consists mostly of short 2-4 minute songs. The only exceptions are the 9 minute ”Pedagogue” and the 6 minute ”Prophet”. On the other hand, some of the songs form suites of their own, i.e. some of the songs are tied together by seamlessly stitching them together.

Being’s compositions are so dense and full of musical information and ideas that many a mediocre prog band would have built a 20 minute epic out of them. Indeed, Being’s short but extremely complex pieces are more akin to the music of Gentle Giant and especially Henry Cow than to the more leisurely symphonic arcs of, say, Yes or Genesis.

Jukka Gustavson’s beloved soul influences add their own piquant flavour not often heard in prog. Being sounds a bit like what Henry Cow might sound like if Stevie Wonder had been a member of the band. The respected British music critic Ian Mcdonald went further than me in his comparison and wrote in praise of the album, describing the music as sounding like the aforementioned Stevie Wonder meets Frank Zappa’s Mother Of Invention and Robert Wyatt, all directed by composer Arnold Schoenberg. Yes, I could subscribe to that too.

The more complex compositions by Gustavson and Pohjola alternate in a balanced way with Pembroke’s slightly lighter pieces (which are not simple tunes either). It’s a really effective solution and the whole thing even feels surprisingly coherent. Although the original composition of the songs can be clearly traced back to one man, all the songs, after going through the arrangement/recording grinder, have become specifically Wigwam music.

The most challenging aspect of Being is represented by Gustavson’s compositions, especially ”Pedagogue” and ”Prophet”, which are not only rhythmically complex, but also constantly evolving and deftly evading the normal pop formula of musical repetition.

”Pedagogue” has its roots in the three-minute single ”Pedagogi”, released a couple of years earlier, but on Being Gustavson modified and expanded the composition significantly and the link to the original version is barely recognisable. The beautifully sounding ”Pedagogue”, which is full of changes in tempo, features brass arrangements by Pekka Pohjola that are a treat to listen to and bring to mind not only Pohjola’s idol Frank Zappa, but also Pohjola’s own first solo albums. In the context of Being, the arrangements could have worked a bit more sharply, though. Gustavson’s effervescent and nimble-fingered soloing on a Fender electric piano is also particularly stunning in ’Pedagogue’. The song also features a soprano saxophone solo from 

Pekka Pöyry.

( https://pienemmatpurot.com/2024/02/03/review-wigwam-being-1974/ )