Man – MAN (1971) album review
Man, the rock group that spilled forth from South Wales in the late sixties and released a raft of albums throughout the seventies, were never ones to accept the pigeonhole gracefully. After all, what were they? Could Man be called psychedelic rock, progressive rock, country-rock or good old-fashioned pub rock?
Well they took elements of all these disciplines and brewed their own concoction, which if a category must be applied, would fall somewhere within the progressive-country-blues bracket… probably. MAN, their eponymously titled third album from 1971 is a suitable example of this eclectic clash of styles, as it veers from one to the next over the course of five songs.
Kicking off with the bluesy, pub-rocker ‘Romain’, a first-time listener may think they have Man sussed as it slips into the Tennessee-tinged ‘Country Girl’, which wouldn’t sound out of place blasting from the stage of the The Grand Ole Oprey. However, what follows most certainly would.
‘Would the Christians Wait Five Minutes? The Lions Are Having a Draw’ is as progressive as seventies progressive rock comes, right down to the unwieldy, tongue-in-cheek title. The thirteen minute instrumental, complete with occasional ethereal chanting, takes us beyond the realms of deepest space on a gentle, sometimes searing, voyage into the unknown and is a damn sight better than that equally unwieldy description might have you believe. It also appears to be a completely different band to that playing on the first two tracks. More Pink Floyd than Floyd Tillman.
Then as your coming down following the spaced out trip of ‘Would the Christians Wait Five Minutes…’, Man let rip with the hard-edged rock ‘n’ roll of ‘Daughter of the Fireplace’, which despite a few progressive elements thrown in for good measure, once again casts the listener’s expectations out the window.
MAN concludes with the twenty minute ‘Alchemist’, a psychedelic prog rock magnum opus that sounds like Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’ off of the same year’s Meddle colliding headfirst with a Hawkwind freak-out.
Reading through the liner notes provided by vocalist and guitarist Deke Leonard, reveals the album to have been made on a diet of finest homegrown and industrial strength LSD. With such a liberated attitude to their intake of mind-altering substances, Man created in MAN a spacey, tripped-out, sometimes conventional but always erratic dichotomy of an album. And a damned fine one at that.
The Esoteric Recordings reissue contains two bonus tracks. The single version of ‘Daughter of the Fireplace’, and the longer, first version of ‘Alchemist’.
MAN is remastered and reissued by Esoteric and available from Amazon.co.uk
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