VELVET THUNDER

Smiles And Grins – another live favourite – ups the ‘prog’ content again, as it seems to juggle time signatures like a unicycling clown: you keep thinking it must all collapse at any moment and yet somehow it keeps it all together cohesively.

There have been a few Jack Bruce offerings in the last couple of years from Esoteric, with a couple of sets of live and session material having been followed up by his first solo album Songs For A Tailor from 1969. That release is now joined by 1971’s Harmony Row, getting the same deluxe expanded treatment as its predecessor, and it is a real cracker. I haven’t heard every album Bruce has put out (there’s quite a bit of fearsome jazz stuff for a start), but I’ve heard a good proportion of it, and this album is the best I’ve encountered without doubt. It is also the ‘go to’ Bruce album for anyone who is primarily a progressive rock aficionado, as it creeps more into the ‘prog’ arena than anything else he ever put out – at least to my knowledge. What is perhaps more surprising is that he manages to accomplish this with just a trio line-up (though having Chris Spedding on guitar is always going to open things up for you, I guess). Jack himself contributes keyboards as well as the expected bass and vocals, while John Marshall is behind the kit.

Following the mellow and understated introductory track Can You Follow?, we move seamlessly into the oddly titled Escape To The Royal Wood (On Ice) – a reminder that Bruce’s long-time lyrical partner Pete Brown was often surreal in his output to say the least. The music here matches the highly ‘prog’ feel of the song title, as it weaves a subtly evocative spell combining hints of Jethro Tull with a vocal delivery and manner of phrasing which foreshadows the early career of Roxy Music so strongly that it seems inconceivable that Bryan Ferry did not listen to this with interest before the following year’s Roxy debut album. A marvellous track, which retains the interest brilliantly via its creatively off-the-wall feeling. There’s a little more of a straight rock feel to the barnstorming live favourite You Burned The Tables On Me up next, to remind us that Jack was, indeed, a member of Cream, and it’s a perfectly judged change of pace.

Following the relatively brief There’s A Forest, we’re into a real purple patch, with three true highlights coming hard on the heels of each other. Morning Story even has a little hint of early Gentle Giant in its propulsive yet tricksy nature, while the following Folk Song is pastoral and sublime. Smiles And Grins – another live favourite – ups the ‘prog’ content again, as it seems to juggle time signatures like a unicycling clown: you keep thinking it must all collapse at any moment and yet somehow it keeps it all together cohesively. Post War is another rather unlikely piece, playing with elements of rock and blues without being quite either, and yet it once again works against the odds – and while A Letter Of Thanks may be a slightly less impressive mix of rock and jazzy boogie, the beautifully building Victoria Sage is sublime. Indeed that track could well have closed the album, but instead it was chosen for the sashaying beach bossa-nova of The Consul At Sunset to do so instead. A mistake in my book, but then again my book isn’t Jack Bruce’s book, and it’s worth a lot less! Four alternative takes are added to the first disc as bonus tracks, and while most are decent re-imaginings, the electric piano version of You Burned The Tables On Me was very wisely left on the cutting room floor!

The second disc here contains the new mix by Stephen Tayler. His work on the Songs For A Tailor album was revelatory, transforming the initially disappointing original mix into a hugely more impressive listen. This time out, it’s more subtle, because the production work on the original Harmony Row album is much better than it was on that previous release – however this is not to say that the new mix isn’t superior, because it is, with a greater clarity to the sound which gives it a nice spring clean. It’s more that the difference is not so night and day this time out, because it simply didn’t need to be. There are four different bonus tracks on this disc, which are better and more essential than those on the first. Two of them are alternate versions (Smiles And Grins and A Letter Of Thanks), both of which are arguably better than the originals, but the other two are new. Riffs is a bit of a jam, but is very entertaining for all that, while End Piece really should have been just that and closed the album. This is the disc I will gravitate towards.

The third and fourth discs are Blu-Ray, with Disc Three being the audiophile surround sound – don’t worry too much if you don’t have a 5.1 setup currently, as the relatively stripped back nature of this album means it isn’t crying out for the treatment to my ears. Disc Four is video content, and is very good with the odd reservation. The Granada TV show Out Front is excellent musically, though the filming suffers for concentrating almost exclusively on Jack himself – it’s his party, granted, but I would have liked to see a lot more of Chris Spedding. Swing In With Jack Bruce is a German TV special which includes interview footage as well as five songs, meaning that those interview segments are simultaneously fascinating while also potentially losing their replay value. I have to say that it really does seem a strange decision not to include any of this as audio material on the CD part of the set – musically the content is easily good enough to be essential without the visuals. That’s a gripe though, as it is good to see this video footage unearthed and preserved in any case.

If you’re a fan of Jack’s solo work, you won’t need any persuading about this release. If however you are a more casual listener, particularly of the prog rock persuasion, this should be your entry point into Jack Bruce’s solo world. To me, he never really did better.