Review from the AMG:
One
of the most unique albums of the 1970s, R. Stevie Moore's debut
long-player is an uncategorizable mess that somehow keeps from falling
apart completely, kind of like a one-man band version of the Beatles' White Album
cross-pollinated with late-1960s Frank Zappa at his most antic. Yet
just as the album seems hopelessly self-indulgent and bizarre, Moore
suddenly veers into some of the sweetest and catchiest pop songs of the
pre-punk '70s. That dichotomy is what makes Phonography
special. Recorded in bits and pieces over the course of two years of
living room sessions, with Moore playing and singing every part,
barring the tambourine on the Soft Machine-like opening instrumental
"Melbourne," the album shares much with such one-man band predecessors
as McCartney, Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything?, and Roy Wood's Boulders. However, having been made on a cheap four-track with one microphone, a borrowed guitar, and no mixing deck, Phonography
also has a funky lo-fi charm that anticipates post-grunge D.I.Y.
savants like Guided By Voices and Pavement. The album is split down the
middle between quirky but capable pop songs and strange interludes. Of
the former, "Goodbye Piano," a falsetto music hall ditty that suggests
a major Bonzo Dog Band fixation, is among Moore's most famous tracks,
but it's the more serious tunes, like the beautiful Brian
Wilson-inspired ballad "I've Begun to Fall in Love," the bouncily
Beatlesque "I Want You In My Life" and the trippy "Showing Shadows,"
that are more indicative of the artist's estimable skills as a
songsmith. The spoken word interludes are uniformly surreal, with the
Harold Pinter-like talk show parody "The Lariat Wressed Posing Hour" a
particular highlight, but the album is organized to such an
off-the-wall blueprint that it's impossible to imagine it without even
its most inexplicable elements. Originally released in 1976 in an
edition of 100 copies, Phonography was reissued in 1978 and
again in 1998 on a limited-edition CD featuring eight bonus tracks
recorded during the same 1974-76 sessions.
R. Stevie Moore is,
in my opinion, a genius musician of the highest order. He has recorded
literally hundreds of one-man-band albums and composed some of the most
impressive pop tunes you've never heard. This album is a good place to
start, but he has many many more, equally wonderful if not actually
better. I can't recommend this one highly enough!
You can also buy direct from the artist himself at rsteviemoore.com.
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