Moby Grape – Moby Grape (1967)

From starling.rinet.ru

This album has stood the test of time better than most of its contemporaries, but it’s not the band’s collective “genius” that accounts for it – rather it’s just the band’s collective pool of meticulous, hardworking capacities. At the heart of Moby Grape may have been a mad genius (Skip Spence), but Skip actually only gets two of his songs on here, with all the other band members also songwriters. And this is good, professional songwriting, which eventually gets to you; not a single song is really “misguided” or “fillerish”.

One thing I can’t quite understand is why this album is often called “psychedelic”. Oh sure, it was written by a bunch of free-thinkin’ hippie-minded people smack dab in the middle of 1967 smack dab in the middle of San Francisco. I guess that kinda nails it, doesn’t it? Wrong. Nothing on this record is psychedelic, except that the guitar tones often remind one of Jefferson Airplane (which doesn’t immediately make them psychedelic) and there’s a limited amount of weirdness running through the songs, but Frank Zappa was weird, too. No, indeed, in reality Moby Grape’s debut is mostly reminiscent of contemporary Buffalo Springfield records, with a little less country influence, mayhaps.

It’s straightahead pop that often has its roots in traditional American music, no more and no less.And thus the serious implication: Moby Grape is a record I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anybody who can’t stand a single whiff of the psychedelic excesses of bands like the Airplane or QMS or the pre-1970 Grateful Dead. It’s an honest, down-to-earth, “authentically moving” record. For me, the problem is that, just like the Springfield, Moby Grape don’t much care about instant memorability.

The songs are complex enough and they’re wonderfully conceived and planned out, but very few equal “pop genius”, for me, at least. Upon first listen I could very well say it’s one of those albums that I like much more “in theory” than “in practice” – the very idea of an intelligent, provoking, half-rootsy/half-poppy album with songs carefully thought over, coming from a bunch of supposed potheads, appealed to me on a very basic level, but I was somewhat disappointed about the actual realization. Yet the idea it was that actually kept me listening, and you know what? Most of these tunes you get warmed to pretty quickly.

Some people seem to think that in general the Grape were better when it came to softer, more sentimental material, and I think they’re right. See, it’s not that they really suck at rocking out; it’s rather that when they rock out, they do it in the traditional Californian matter, which can be summarized as “I’m rocking harder than Cream or Jimi Hendrix even if I’ve never heard either”. In other words, they take your basic Fifties-level electric guitar soloing and try to make it “tougher” by playing higher notes than usual. That’s all very well, but that’s definitely below the 1967 standard.Even so, ‘Hey Grandma’ is a lot of boogie fun (and was even covered by The Move a year later!), and Peter Lewis’ ‘Fall On You’ is one of the best rockers to come out of the entire Californian scene of the time.

The guitars may be thin-sounding, but you can’t beat that paranoid ‘yes I know it’s falling! yes I know it’s falling!’ harmonizing in the background while we are getting all the bad news in the main lyrical body. Skip’s ‘Omaha’ lacks a centralized hook, but once again the harmonies save it from being a disgrace, and besides, at least these guitars are energetic in places. And ‘Changes’ boasts a generic, but catchy pop vocal melody. I don’t care much for the rest of the rocking numbers – Skip’s second contribution, ‘Indifference’, is perhaps the best indication of the guy’s lunatic state of mind at the time, but it’s predictably messy and clumsy; and then they go for sort of a soulful R’n’B-ish approach on some of the tracks which just doesn’t seem to gel at all. I mean, ‘Come In The Morning’? Wouldn’t you rather wanna put some Sly & The Family Stone on instead?But like I said, it’s the slower stuff here that really does the trick anyway.

All of the ballads are good, and it’s a rare thing in my book when a band is able to do their ballads better than their rockers – when a band is able to rock out at all, that is (I mean, naturally the Beach Boys’ ballads are better than their “rockers”, but the thing is, they don’t often do those, and when they do, they almost always suck, so there). ‘8:05’ is a whole load of unpretentious, friendly prettiness, with tasty acoustic flourishes and heart-melting falsetto harmonies. Jerry Miller’s hilarious folksy interlude ‘Naked If I Want To’ is notorious for featuring the question ‘can I buy an amplifier on time?’.

‘Someday’ isn’t memorable at all but features a brilliant contrast between the main body of the song (falsetto vocals) and that operatic soaring part at the end. The country-rock ditty ‘Ain’t No Use’, in dire contrast, is one of the album’s catchiest numbers (Gram Parsons might have learned a thing or two from these guys, if you don’t mind me saying so!).And finally, ‘Sitting By The Window’ is just absolutely gorgeous – proving my hypothesis that Lewis was the most accomplished songwriter of the bunch (he wrote the album’s best rocker too, remember that). The chorus is pure brilliance, with the slightly crooning vocal intonation on the ‘but just the same, I’m playing my game’ lines and the atmospheric harmonies whirling around it.

I guess you could try to pick the psychedelic influences on that one, with the moody mysterious guitar arpeggios and the way the harmonies are like little angels flying around the main melody… ah well, never mind. It is, actually, one of those albums where the songwriting is so even it’s hard to pick favourites; I know I’ve pinpointed some songs as great and some as so-so but that may all be vice versa in your opinion.

Even the worst material here has something to offer, whereas even the best material on here still couldn’t compete with Beatles-quality pop (well, maybe ‘Sitting By The Window’ could, but geez, it’s more Bing Crosby in essence than the Beatles). One thing’s for certain – the record really stands out from everything else made in the same environment in the same time period.