Home was Procul Harum’s fourth album. It kicks off with a storming Robin Trower number, Whisky Train. Trower is a guitar player who solos with the face of a man squeezing out a hard poo after a period of constipation, and here he delivers a solid example of hard R’n’B, made all the better for being tightly controlled. I was looking forward to the rest of the album if it maintained that calibre of performance.
But no. As I lay down dying… intones Gary Brooker over plangent chords and it’s pretty dull stuff thereafter. It is notably very well played, but still dull. It’s made duller because I suspect it pretends to relevance and profundity. I didn’t bother with a second listen.
However, it has to be said that it’s better than the big release of 50 years ago today: Self Portrait by Bob Dylan. Surely, I thought, it couldn’t be as bad as everyone* says? Yes it could. In fact it might even be worse.
(*Almost everyone: Marc Bolan wrote to Melody Maker praising it.)
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