WESTERN FLIER

Two years after their freak out album, Waymouth reformed H&TCC, with only him as an original member, but he got the help of The Groundhog's Tony McPhee. Filled with a brand new line-up, it appears that Waymouth wouldn't have even played on this album, even if he wrote all but one of the original songs and arranged two of the three covers.

The album sounds nothing like its predecessor, more than doubling the tracks, with some mega weird Budreaux phone dialogue, than some whacked-out Acadian/Cajun country folk (Callinda), some weird blues (Chicken Run) mixed with strange choirs from the RnR Women and wild percussion works from the Heavy Metal Kids (I imagine not the future Glam rock group), some pure RnR (Big Po Peep) with a country-esque violin, Car Car and Milk Shake Knock are pure country music. The Wall returns with some interesting female celestial choirs, and its high-flying vocals make it the album's highlight, coupled with You And Ophelia. But the closing 9-mins blues Fare You Well is overstaying its welcome by well over its half distance.

Personally this writer's hate for country music (and its successor country rock) is too strong to give any credits to artists that regularly plunge into progressive forms of their crafts, but this album's flipside helps forgetting the catastrophic side A with the last two second last tracks, showing that the Hapshash had some kind of possibilities.