Heron

My previous entry, a ten year old review of Heron's "River of fortune", seemed to come out of nowhere. What inspired it was receiving a double cd of all the tracks that Heron recorded for Pye's "progressive" label Dawn in the early 70s.

I made reference to the "penny tour" - this took place at the beginning of November 1970. Reasoning that for the admission price of one old penny there was no way that I could lose, I went to the concert. I know that four groups appeared, but two obviously made no impression as I could never remember who they were. One of the two groups that I do remember was Comus, who might have had Lindsay Cooper (later to play with National Health and Henry Cow) in their ranks at that time. The other group was Heron.

So impressed was I with their performance that I immediately went and bought their eponymous album. If I remember correctly, this was via mail from some pre-Virgin outfit which offered discounts, so I have no way of knowing whether the album actually hit the shops.

The simple arrangements - the record was recorded "live" in a field, supposedly with no overdubs - caught and tickled my ear, and some of the songs accompanied me throughout the years. Unfortunately, an accident with a record player managed to leave the opening song on side two, "Lord and Master", with a huge scratch, making it unplayable.

At the beginning of the 90s, in a fit of nostalgia, I discovered that there had been a cd release for Heron called "The best of ... plus", which featured songs from both of their albums as well as a few oddities. Whilst the cd was better than nothing, it wasn't really what I wanted, which was the first album in its entirety, sequenced as per the vinyl. "River of fortune" was interesting in its exhumation of the old songs, but sounded too modern for the material.

So I was delighted when I found the new compilation, which begins with the first album in toto. Here's the sole review at Amazon, which sums things up nicely: I can't believe how good this album is - imagine if in the summer 1970 Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles and Crowded House (no kidding) got together and recorded a hazy summer filled acoustic album in a field complete with heavenly vocal harmonics and real background bird song and field sounds - this album is that and more. You will NOT be disappointed, a true gem of a find; how this band didn't end up massive is a true mystery to me. I'll put money on it being your new fave album within 10 minutes of listening.

Apart from the delight of being reunited with old friends who haven't lost their charm, it's also very instructive to compare the songs from the first album with their other material. Most fascinating from my point of view is "Harlequin 2 (long version)", an alternate take of this exquisite song. I remember from the penny concert when Gerald Moore introduced it by saying that "harlequin is such a lovely word" - so much so that he wrote several numbered Harlequin songs. After the song part of H2 ends, there is a brief pause and then a longish (by Heron standards) instrumental section, followed by variations on the song's chorus. The instrumental section is adorned by several instruments being played out of time, explaining why the song was cut at the end of the vocal section and so appeared enigmatic. I wrote that this is an alternate take; it may be the same basic take as the final version, but mixed slightly differently and without the Hammond organ overdubs, which give the lie to the "recorded live in a field" statement. Actually, H2 is the only song which sounds as if overdubs were added.

I am reminded of the quote which I put in the 'River of fortune' review: we shortened a couple of the original recordings because of cock-ups. The out of time instrumental contributions certainly fall into the cock-up category.

There is another extra song, 'Rosalind', which sounds like the other songs on the first album. In my review I compared Heron to Crosby, Stills and Nash, but this song sounds much more like Simon and Garfunkel. In fact, listening to the entire first album reveals a division in sound between two camps: on the one hand there are Roy Apps and Tony Pook, whereas on the other hand there is Gerald Moore. The Apps/Pook songs have two part harmonies and are gentle (for example, "Car crash", "For you"), whereas the Moore songs tend to be more adventurous musically (the aforementioned "Harlequin 2") and sound closer to pop. The best songs, naturally, are when everybody contributes fully.

This division becomes clearer on the second album, when bass and drums were added to the Heron mix (and I can also hear electric guitar here and there). All the charm of the first album has been lost, replaced by some homogenous acoustic pop sound which is not particularly good. I have only listened to a few of the songs from the second album; those which included on the 'Best of' compilation are similar but not as good as those from the first album, and those which weren't included are dissimilar and nowhere as good.

It seems very much like I am going to confine my listening to the first album and recommend it to everyone.