Trollheart

Album title: Aardvark, or Put That In Your Pipe and Smoke It!
Artist: Aardvark
Nationality: English
Label: Deram Nova
Chronology: Debut
Previous Experience of this Artist: Zero

Tracklisting: Copper Sunset/Very Nice of You to Call/Many Things to Do/Greencap/I Can’t Stop/Outing/Once Upon a Hill/Put That In Your Pipe
Comments: Let’s not mention Free again, shall we? By the time this album was recorded both Simon Kirke and Paul Kossoff had left to make music history, so the only other real point I can make about this, Aardvark’s only (until their rather unexpected reunion in 2016) album is that this was a band who did not employ a guitar player. In a prog rock band, that’s not quite as jarring as having no keyboard player (whoever heard of such a thing?) but it’s still pretty unique. Is it the only thing of interest about the album? Let’s have a listen.

Well you could have fooled me! I’m told that “fuzzed-up guitar sound” is made on Hammond, so I guess I have to believe it, but I would have sworn it was a guitar. Anyway, the opener is a down and dirty grinding rocker which sounds very much more in the psyche/hard rock mould than prog rock to me, Dave Skillin’s vocal reminds me a little of Dave Brock. Not a lot to write home about yet. “Very Nice of You to Call” (a typical English genteel song title if there ever was one!) gives me a kind of early Santana feel, quite jazzy with some nice piano emulating Rick Davies at his best. Steve Milliner, take a bow. It then just dies and fades off into nothing though, while “Many Things to Do” has another heavy psyche vibe, very raw and ragged; a bit annoying if I’m honest. The sprightly organ run actually makes it worse.

“Greencap” uses some sort of Beefheartesque distorted vocal and is driven by expressive organ, but though I’m a fan of the keys I am already missing the bite of a guitar. You can make a Hammond sound like one, but it’s still a Hammond. And so the album relies almost exclusively on keyboard passages, which, no matter how I love the instrument, can get boring and predictable. Another thing Aardvark seem to do here is noodle, go on extensive jams and sort of fill up what appear to me to be substandard songs with long, rambling instrumental passages. I mean, they’re good - they’re not pointless or wankery - but they can get wearing. This track is six minutes and change, and really does not need to be.

There’s a nice lush Hammond intro to “I Can’t Stop”, and it may actually be the first track that’s impressed me. Thought it was going to be an instrumental but as the keys get faster and boppier the vocal comes in, and to be perfectly honest they’ve kind of ruined the song. Another really nice honky-tonk piano solo from Milliner but the track has suddenly degenerated into a sub-Berry blues/rock thing now, and while it’s good, it’s not what I had hoped it would be. “Outing” kicks off like some mad version of “Summer Holiday”, almost punk long before punk, and god help me it runs for almost ten minutes. I think I’m going to hate this. Skillin’s vocal this time puts me in mind of the guy who sang “The Monster Mash”. Seriously. How the hell are they going to stretch this piece of garbage to ten minutes? Oh I see: a Hawkwindesque space-out jam. They sing “We’re going away”. Sadly, they’re not, not for some time.

Yeah. That’s for dopeheads only. I’m sure they’ll love it. Me, I hate it. About nine minutes longer than it needs to be. On we go. “Once Upon a Hill” is the only song on the album not written by Dave Skillin, so perhaps bassist Stan Aldous can give us something here we might actually enjoy? It’s short anyway, just over three minutes, and it’s very airy-fairy, hippy-dippy balladry, kind of sounds like it might have worked on one of Syd’s albums. Still, for what it is, not bad, and it takes us to the last track. The alternate title of the album, “Put That In Your Pipe” (for those who don’t know or are too young to get the reference, this used to be a sort of put-down: comparable I guess to “chew on that” or "if the cap fits" or something) has another big Hammond intro which then becomes an uptempo space-rocker driven on Aldous’s thick buzzing bass with Milliner’s fingers flying over the keys. This one, it turns out, is an instrumental, and it’s not all that bad.

Favourite track(s): Once Upon a Hill (maybe)
Least favourite track(s): Outing (by a mile, although I hate most of this album)
Overall impression: Boring and bland and very repetitive. Can’t deny it’s got the proggy touches, but as I said I think the album suffers from the lack of guitar. There also isn’t much going on in the songwriting area and overall this did not impress me at all. Looks like Kirke and Kossof had the right idea!
Personal Rating:

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018