Where bought? This feels like a rare appearance for Probe in Liverpool, a record shop that disappoints more than it should. I wish them all the best, and their psych selections have always been ahead of the curve, but feels like they could be doing more in a city like that.
Music criticism used to be so powerful to me that it would affect entire narratives of how I would approach certain groups, eras, albums, etc. This album is a strong case-in-point. In the late 90s Can were still not quite at the point of critical reappraisal they would reach a few years later, and what writing in English could be gotten hold of would often say that the Damo Suzuki years were great, while Malcolm Mooney was a 'poor' singer who said things that made no sense.
When I picked this up I studied the sleeve on the way home: oh no! It's a Malcolm Mooney record. Should I take it back? I can't. I'm on the train home and it is late. Probe will be shut. Let's give it a go and take it back next weekend, no harm no foul.
Within approximately 30 seconds I found myself enjoying the record greatly. The electrifying and hypnotic rhythms were in place from the get-go, and in some ways Mooney's vocals were better because they were at once clearer and yet in grasping the words the sentiments seemed more elusive. To wit:
Look at the place of mine behind the curb
Through the layers found in earthen drift, indeed that is you
And with you, mother screams 'I am mother'
Woman screams 'I am fertile' and the father can't yell
The first three tracks present something from a proto-garage rock mentality that is spun out into something a bit weirder (well, 'Outside my Door' could be a Nuggets cut) by the cutting bass playing and the drummer pippety-popping all over the place in an interesting way. It's about 18 minutes of cool as shit distended psychedelic rock music.
But they were going somewhere else, as evidenced by the side-long 'Yoo Doo Right'. There's aspects of jazz (modality, yes, but also the passing of focus between different instrumentalists), modern classicalism, early electronics, and a whole other things that fall out of the purview of whatever rock'n'roll was in 1969. It uses two notes as a ticket to travel through different states of hypnosis. Down the final ten minutes it really starts to cook and it dawns on you that these are special musicians rather than some tossers with guitars.
Obviously keeping this one. Maybe Can are in the bro-rock canon now but they're also brilliant at music.
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