Search - Peter Hammill :: Sitting Targets

LOST IN THE MIDDLE

Kerry Leimer | Makawao, Hawaii United States | 04/12/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"In what must be Hammill's "middle period", somewhere between "Chameleon" and "What, Now", some interesting tendencies begin to surface. Instead of album titles, albums tend to use a track title. Odd, that, because this naming style imparts such a different feel to whatever is summarized under the title. In this case, the title song, "Sitting Targets", is yet another call to personal responsibility, condensed in scale and scope to fit a "songs" format. The metaphors here and throughout the album seem simple and take on a surface gloss: the road is life, the car is an isolating shell, even if we think we're safe, we really aren't, etc., etc. The music has a terrific, home studio sound: raw, unpolished with wildly tweaked EQ. The playing is adequate, but never informed by the extremes of his earlier work. And now, something interesting happens, at least to my perception of Hammill's style. From the perspective of his very recent work, the early solo work was bathed in deeper degrees of abstraction and what seemed to be earnest, raw emotion in the vocal delivery. Here the writing and singing begin to sound less earnest and more theatrical. Meaning that over-the-top, heavy technique demanded by the traditional theatre. Practiced for effect, and telegraphed rather than inferred. The style that once seemed intrinsic and authentic, now seems heavily rehearsed and staged. All this transmits a tangible degree of brittleness and artificiality to the whole experience. There are some terrific riffs, some beguiling instrumental and vocal processing and treatments - Hammill's "Sonix" perhaps begin this period, but that's a whole different subject. "Sitting Targets" is in many ways a very worthwhile recording. Compared to most of the catalog here on Amazon, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Compared with Hammill's own library, it's simply a transitional step. Enough to say that what once came from the heart here comes from the mind, and many many times the heart has proven to be the wiser."