FLAT BAROQUE AND BERSERK

Harper's fourth album, and certainly his most consistent up to that point, it was also his first release on what turned out to be a decade long and extremely fruitful association with the EMI Harvest label.

A largely solo acoustic guitar set (a harp accompaniment here, a small string ensemble there) Baroque is packed with strong songs and contains a number of bona fide classics in the Harper canon - the elegiac Another Day, the vitriolic I Hate The White Man.

White Man aside, the prevailing mood is reflective and introspective. There are short and sweet homages to former lovers and to Harper's brother Davey. Harper's best songs sound as though they demanded to be written and, in these sparse arrangements, the songs and his passionate delivery cut straight to the heart.

Baroque rounds off with the raucous Hell's Angels, which does rather shatter the carefully created contemplative mood, but it's a funky enough psychedelically tinged number and Roy, playing electric guitar and backed by the Nice no less, sounds like he's having a great time.

This record is as fresh as the day it was recorded. Roy Harper has written many excellent songs throughout his long career but, in retrospect, the 70s does seem like a golden era for him, producing a steady stream of ageless albums. This was the first of them.

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