Half Man - The Complete Field Guide For Cynics
1999 Skivfabriken/Border Music
This is a special album for our web-site, an old/new style of heavy psychedelia
strictly connected with the seventies hard blues. Here you can listen to a
very personal view of the blues sounds filtered by a psychedelic veil.
The music starts with an harmonica, really unusual in the heavy psychedelic
scene but a classic instrument in the hard rock blues tradition; the song
is Blues Ain't Nothing, and his electric riff is really irresistible in his
simplicity, with the strong bluesly voice of Janne that's really effective.
This kinds of guitars and vocals remember me the best ZZ Top things, combined
with some chords that arrive directly from the seventies. In fact in Insane
the riff has got something of the early Tony Iommi, that give to the song
a powerful push that lead to the good refrain.
Some southern echoes come out with the songs like Home For Two, broken in
the last part with a distorted and slower break. Nowhere leading road is the
first track that features acoustic guitars in the introduction, and then explode
in a killer attack, with good rhythm changes and various instrumentals ideas.
In some episodes, as Two Drinks Of Wine or When The Train Comes Back, the
band bring me down along the Mississippi, with this slow seductive blues,
really warm and intense. The strangest things of the Half Man can be found
in some things as Ain't Ya Coming Home or in the fantastic instrumental Two
Perverted Men, in which you'll be lead in a trip that starts with the first
Pink Floyd releases and arrive to the stoner planet, flying on thirty years
of psychedelic and progressive rock, with the unique special touch of this
northern bluesmen.
This probably is the way that in future will give the band a great space in
the heavy pscyh outline. The record continue with a blues-stoner episode as
Hardly Wait, with acoustic guitars and a distorted powerful riff that will
make every stoned head really happy. The southern atmospheres come back with
the Rodney's Song and the last wonderful episode of this great album: Shake
That Thing, probably one of my favourites (but it's really difficult to find
a single song that isn't at an high level), good refrain and great instrumental
work, the best way to close this heavy-psych-blues saga.
Track List: 1. Blues Ain't Nothing (but a botheration on your mind) 2. Insane
3. Home For Two 4. Nowhere Leading Road (part 1 & 2) 5. When The Train Comes
Back 6. Ain't Ya Coming Home, Babe? 7. Two Perverted Men In The Swamp (part
1& 2) 8. Hardly wait 9. Searching For A Woman 10. Two Drinks Of Wine 11. Rodney's
Song 12. Shake That Thing
Bokal, Stoned Gods