THE TWO SIDES OF TONY (T.S) MCPHEE

In the time between the Groundhogs albums "Hogwash" and "Solid", Tony McPhee decided to create a genuinely solo album. Quite why he felt the need to do this is not abundantly clear, his role in the band being the only one outside the rhythm section.

However, the album fits in well in the Groundhogs discography, offering two distinct sides of their music, i.e. the blues on which they were founded and the later electronic sounds which became increasingly relevant to their style.

The five tracks which occupy side one of the LP are short acoustic affairs, featuring only McPhee and acoustic guitars. The style is blues/folk with a southern, swampy drawl. We do not get the standard blues song structure, the tracks generally being more upbeat, but the influences are clear. Fans of the Groundhogs are probably best advised to steer clear of these songs, even the straight blues of the first album "Scratching the surface" was more exciting than this. McPhee's performances are of course beyond reproach, but this is dull stuff.

Side two is a completely different kettle of fish. Here McPhee vents his anger at the peculiar British sport of fox-hunting. He does so via one of his closest ventures to prog, a 19 minute synthesiser and mellotron based side filler. The track takes us through the stages of a hunt, with intermittent narration telling us what is going on. The narrations act as links between the improvisations, each of which can be seen as a separate sub-track or section. With electronic rhythms as the only percussion, the overall effect is not unlike the experiments of Krafwerk and Tangerine Dream, a little clumsy perhaps but in its day this would have sounded quite novel.

Overall, this is probably one of the most divided albums ever. On the one hand we have rambling acoustic blues, on the other pioneering electronic prog.

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