FRUMPY 2

Frumpy´s second album was released in 1971 and showed a band expanding to a quintet with guitarist Rainer Baumann joining the group prior to the recording of this disc. The songs were following the same formula as before although the arrangements are a tad more sophisticated than on their debut, with Baumann adding some nice flourishes most of the time, even if it is clearly that keyboardist Jean-Jacques Kravetz pretty much runs the show with his heavy organ riffing. It is also nice to see that vocalist Inga Rumpf is also singing better than ever, her powerful bluesy delivering is surely one of the highlights of the band.

With hindsight is very easy to see why the band was so popular at home but could not break in England or the USA. While Frumpy proved capable of playing a kind of heavy, organ drenched blues rock as good as any of their british or american counterparts, the band was unable to add anything new to the basic format, unlike many of their german peers who were much more bold and experimental. Not that the band were not capable of doing something different: Kravetz sometimes threw a few interesting melodic lines during the instrumental breaks (like in Duty), but it was all too timid, short and retrieved. Most of the time you could not tell them from another british band of the genre. In other words, they lacked a strong musical personality that would set them apart from so many others. In Germany their skilled raw blues rock delivering could be a novelty but elsewhere it was not.

That´s not to say that the songs were bad, on the contrary: they were very good and all band members were excellent. However, this kind of music was waning fast, with most bands becoming more sophisticated and eclectic (like Deep Purple) or simply disappearing from the scene (like Iron Butterfly). Frumpy was in danger of becoming obsolete before they could hit the big time in international terms. And the leaving of Kravetz soon after this album was out would only worse matters.

But they did deliver a fine hard/blues rock album that is a joy to hear. Maybe more enjoyable nowadays than it was then. If you like the bands in the vein of Deep Purple mark I, Atomic Rooster or Colosseum, you should not miss this one.

Rating: 3,5 stars.