The Edgar Broughton Band – “The Meat Album”
The Edgar Broughton Band’s third, self-titled, album kicks off with such a majestic, barnstorming track that it’s impossible for anything else on the album to follow it. ‘Evening Over Rooftops’ is that track and it takes a firm hold on your most sensitive parts, throws you against the nearest wall and refuses to relinquish its grip until you have succumbed to its five minutes and two seconds of brilliance.
Indeed, nothing else on “The Meat Album”* lives up to this starter for ten, but that’s not to say the rest isn’t any cop. Quite the opposite in fact. It keeps you pinned against the wall throughout, just in case you were entertaining ideas of slipping quietly away.
Warwick’s very own hairy freaks, the Edgar Broughton Band, released their third album in 1971 and strengthened their reputation as the progressive, pro-anarchist frontrunners of the British underground music scene.
The opener gives way to ‘The Birth’, submerging the listener in a mire of sleazy, lowdown and dirty, blues-driven drainage ditch rock. It’s this blues edge – harking back to the band’s roots as The Edgar Broughton Blues Band - that fuels the rest of the album, notably on ‘Getting Hard (into) What is a Woman Really For?’
There are plenty of other elements thrown into this simmering cooking pot of barely supressed disillusion and anger, such as the country-rock, cinematic soundscape of the aforementioned ‘Evening Over Rooftops’; the raw country-blues of ‘Poppy’ and bonus track ‘Bring it on Home’; the folkie, pastoral sound of ‘Thinking of You’ and ‘Piece of my Own’; through to the progressive panorama of ‘For Doctor Spock Part One/Part Two’.
The Edgar Broughton Band were always as far from the realms of the spacy/fantasy variety of some of the more excessive prog rock bands as it was possible to get, rooting themselves firmly in the role of social commentators, a la Jethro Tull, and combining it with an infinitely harder edge.
Moving to Notting Hill Gate and becoming a part of the Ladbroke Grove scene – along with the likes of Hawkwind, The Deviants/ The Pink Fairies, The Pretty Things, Quintessence and Mighty Baby – it’s the rawness and dissatisfaction with their lot associated with this underground movement of the late 60s and early 70s that is evident throughout “The Meat Album”.
Bonus tracks are the aforementioned and unreleased ‘Bring it on Home’ and the sublime acoustic single ‘Hotel Room’, backed with the fierce ‘Call me a Liar’, the former of which was named Tony Blackburn’s ‘Single of the Week’ in 1972, despite the toupee’d tit stating that he “hated everything the band stood for”. And if Tony Blackburn hated them, they must be good.
This album sits firmly in the realms of spot on, and is worth getting for ‘Evening Over Rooftops’ alone.
*Incidentally, “The Meat Album” lacks an official title and has come to be known as such because of its cover, which depicts rows of animal carcasses in an abattoir, amongst which a naked human hangs.
The Edgar Broughton Band is released on the EMI/ Harvest label and available from Amazon.co.uk
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