Henry Cow (sample any of their songs HERE) are one of those bands that always get short shrift from just about everybody. Not as genre-specific as Soft Machine; not as cool as Gong, hip as Can, weird as Faust nor popular as Neu! and Kraftwerk.
If anything though, their relative obscurity lends them a certain credibility. While mod-prog heads worship Mars Volta and only skim the surface for MV’s influences, great bands like Henry Cow and Soft Machine are waiting for those of us who plunge in head-to-toe.
In Praise of Learning is the only Henry Cow record I own, and I get the feeling it’s the only one I’ll need to own for awhile because it’s not something I’m going to be in the mood for maybe, say, once every week.
The vocals of Dagmar, for one, are stream of consciousness, defined — not only that, they’re up front and in charge. You’ll find yourself taking a deep breath during the breaks and tensing up again when they start. Not because her singing is bad, but because it’s so challenging.
The instrumentation isn’t nearly as difficult to digest. It’s fantastic in its balance of artiness and grooviness, and this is the sort of fartsy, plump prog-jazz-rock (with a dash of cocktail juice thrown in) motif that has aged wonderfully, especially in light of all the tribute given by artists like Omar Rodriguez-Lopez/Cedric Bixler-Zavala and The Fiery Furnaces.
“Living In The Heart of the Beast,” a long, peripheral sidestep from impassioned lyrics (“High in offices we stared into the turning wheels of cities / dense and ravelled close yet separate: planned to kill all encounter”), is the pivotal track with its future-church synths and cymbals.
It all leads to the most stereotypically prog-rock section of the album, a holds-out, no-balls-barred (oops!) showcase with perfectly matched guitar/bass/drum patterns and bombastic Yes-approved majesty.
That doesn’t last long. Soon you’re listening to but a cello, a bass pattern that won’t quit no matter how many times your ears tell you they should, and piano. Then Dagmar, one of the many Henry Cow-ers, starts rappin’ and a whole new dam is broken, the water cascading over the arrangement in the form of a string section, subtle-but-deadly, deadly-but-beautiful …
You could listen to this tune every day for a year and hear something new damned-near every day. But like I said: This is once-a-week music for me. See how it hits you …
