| | | Ratings (15) |
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| 2.5 average | zaruyache | September 1st 16 |
An old man sings the same song/an orchestra plays the same crescendo reinterpreted a little
different each time. It evolves slowly so the changes are hard to pick out whilst listening, and
that's what makes the record fairly boring; it's just the same thing over and over. It's a
wonderfully nice melody, but heard again and again underneath the 25-second same voice sample gets
grating on the nerves. If the voice had been recorded dozens of individual times or tampered with
in the studio to sound different and change slightly along with the music, this might've been a
more enjoyable and artistically fulfilling release.
Bump |
| 4.5 superb | christgauratings | August 25th 14 |
It's 1971 in the streets around London's Waterloo Station. With halting certainty, an old homeless man--"tramp," the term was--sings one stanza of a hymn a cappella. Takes about 25 seconds. The stanza is looped, with "classical" accompaniment that grows gradually grander. In the original 25-minute version it repeated some 50 times; this CD lasts 74 minutes, so make that 150 or so. Doesn't matter--if you're like me, you never get tired of it. You hum it to yourself, murmur the words, eventually sing it aloud, unable to resist a show of expression that reveals only your own banality. Some complain that at this length the piece is overblown, but as a devotee of ordinary voices, I much prefer it to Bryars's 1995 expansion of the B-side, the "classical" documentary The Sinking of the Titanic. I'm ready to swear the "composer"'s--really arranger's--writing never once obtrudes on the voice or the conviction it embodies. Even Tom Waits bellowing along in a star-time cameo does the tramp's song not the slightest violence. My only regret is that we never get to hear the whole hymn. The tramp is the true star, and he deserves his say. A-
Bump |
| 2.0 poor | Iai EMERITUS | June 14th 08 |
Two minutes of this is absolutely bewitching. An hour? No thanks. This album consists of a recording of an unknown tramp singing a hymn entitled "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" for about 15 seconds, looped ad infinitum until Tom Waits shows up to offer harmony, and to close the album solo. Behind that are some syrupy, not-particularly-good strings. I get the place this has in musical history, and I get what Bryars was trying to accomplish, but holy Christ this is difficult to listen to in full. The Tom Waits vocal is actually pretty poor by his standards, too.
Check out The Sinking of the Titanic instead - you get the original version of this (it's much shorter, if nothing else), plus the titular piece to boot.
Bump |
| 4.0 excellent | Oatus | May 18th 22 |
| 2.5 average | BoerK | October 20th 21 |
| 1.5 very poor | Topaz | July 6th 13 |
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