For you British folks, Moving Finger is essentially (with a couple of significant differences) the Confessions Of The Mind album.
1. Survival Of The Fittest
2. Confessions Of A Mind
3. Lady Please
4. Little Girl
5. Too Young
6. Man Without A Heart
7. Isn't It Nice
8. Frightend Lady
9. Marigold Gloria Swansong
10. Perfect Lady Housewife
11. Gasoline Alley Bred
Although it has nothing to do with this review, the CD reissue in American includes the bonus tracks Separated, I Wanna Shout, Dandelion Wine, and Mad Professor Blyth.
Here's info on the Moving Finger CD, and how you can order it from the U.S. Amazon site:
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OK, here's the review:
http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/thehollies/albums/album/178272/rid/5941592/
Probably few people apart from writers of liner notes realize that the Hollies have had more singles in the British Top Ten than anyone except the Beatles. Their success in the US, however, has been irregular at best. Ever since the Beatles stopped doing "A Hard Day's Night" and went progressive, the type of music the Hollies do best has been in decline, as everyone got on the bandwagon of significance and heaviness. This type of lightweight rock, simple, dynamic, and joyful, is a genre difficult to do well, Seylla and Charybdis being represented on the one hand by bubblegum and on the other by blandness. It's a delicate art and one the Hollies have been the supreme expositors of. Ever since the group began recording their own material exclusively, however, they seem to have gone "progressive" in their own way. Starting about 1967 they became increasingly more polished, less raucous, the songs prettier and quieter. Orchestras began to be heard and everything rocked less; it was a softer music overall. Throughout, however, the Hollies' marvelous vocal sound remained intact.
Moving Finger, their 11th US album, is a further extension of this process and also a milestone of sorts for the band. For one thing, drummer Bobby Elliott has succumbed, after six years, to long hair, a sure sign of the imminent fall of Western Civilization. And two of the group have passed the dread age of 30. Does this mean the beginning of the end for the Hollies? Hardly; but on this album they seem farther away than ever from the simple but perfect music they began with.
Songwriting chores are equally shared by Tony Hicks and by Allan Clarke and Terry Sylvester, but there's little to choose between them. Few of the songs have even the minimal melodic appeal of the second-rate efforts on their previous album. He Ain't Heavy. He's My Brother, and all are lyrically banal while attempting to deal with social and other problems such as war, plastic people, broken homes and the lives of housewives. So much for the songs.
The most remarkable fact about the album is the extensive use of orchestral backings, remarkable because so inept. Take the song "Too Young to Be Married," by Tony Hicks. This concerns a couple whose parents judged them too young to marry, but since the girl was pregnant they went ahead. Now they've got kids and have trouble making ends meet and the wife is tired of it all, but she keeps on going, in a continuing effort to prove the parents wrong. It's a sentimental subject sentimentally treated, and the song is a bit cloying.
During the last verse, out of nowhere, a tremendous brass section erupts suddenly, with trumpets shrilling, trombones blaring, and tubas booming in an orgy of Spectorian sound. It is quite gratuitous, a musical climax which does not arise from the music or lyrics in themselves but is imposed from without. Over and over again the orchestra is used not to augment or support what is going on in the song, but to force excitement or drama which the songs are too weak to provide themselves. This happens in Hicks' guitar work, too; his solos are in the hyperdramatic south-of-the-border style of Marty Robbins' "El Paso" when they are not completely unrelated to the songs, except by being in the same key.
On the other hand, when the song is strong and has internal dynamics the orchestra can be quite effective, as on "Man Without a Heart." This is a driving, intense song powered by Allan Clarke's equally intense singing and here the orchestra reinforces what he's already doing with his voice. It's one of the best things on the album.
Fortunately, the Hollies' singing has not deteriorated in the least. It is as clean, sharp, and harmonious as ever, and as energeticmuch more so than the songs. Once more the vocals triumph over the most banal material. The margin of safety has narrowed, however, making this one of the Hollies' weakest albums. The moving finger writes, and having written, moves on. Where to next? Tune in six months and find out
MELISSA MILLS
(Posted: Apr, 1 1971)
