Help Yourself - Help Yourself & Beware The Shadow 1971-1972 (@320)

 

Help Yourself - Help Yourself & Beware The Shadow 1971-1972

 

Help Yourself Review by Ned Raggett.

 

There's no question that Help Yourself's debut album was a product of its times -- something about the whole easygoing boogie vibe and gentle psych-inspired trippiness, the way of singing, the production, and more just screams early-'70s non-metal and non-glam rock & roll. Look at it one way and Help Yourself was just a cut above incipient bar band culture but, heard with fresh ears years after its release, it strikes a great balance between entertaining the crowd and exploration. Call the band a more down-to-earth Pink Floyd or Hawkwind set somewhere in the English countryside without specifically owing anything to either band. Morley, who takes vocal lead throughout, shows a fine voice similar to Neil Young's, with just that hint of twang while not sounding quite so cracked and strained. At some points the resemblance is overwhelming -- check out the chorus of the wistful "Old Man" (in fact not a cover of Young's own standard, though that would have been perfectly appropriate). As a unit, the four-piece, which finished up the album in a week's time, comes across as seasoned without being overly pro or polished -- the curse of "tasty licks" is generally avoided in favor of relaxed understatement, solos smoothly fitting into the songs rather than dominating them. The more immediately singalong numbers, like "I Must See Jesus for Myself" and the lovely "Paper Leaves," as perfect a late summer evening ramble and sigh as one could ask for, still sneak up on a listener, entrancing without trying too hard to do so. There are some darker numbers worthy of note -- "To Katherine They Fall" is the most space rock of the bunch, keeping the right head-nodding vibes while not tripping out completely, while "Deborah" is a flat-out lovely piano ballad, Morley's wounded voice the perfect accompaniment.

 

Beware the Shadow Review by Ned Raggett.

 

On Help Yourself's third album, the band kept on exploring its quietly entertaining fusion between the trippier and rootsier sides of its personality, a bar band for those who liked to spend their days baking in the sun. The most affecting song is the closer, the beautiful "Passing Through," a gentle acoustic ballad that has the same regret-tinged melancholy of prime Nick Drake but, thanks to the higher singing register, comes across as a quiet anthem, well worth the hearing. The moments when the band freely takes flight are the major highlights elsewhere. The nearly side-long "Reaffirmation" could almost be a bit of proto-new age banality in the wrong hands but -- given the way Morley sings about "cuttin' butter with a knife" amidst the flute noises and how the slow, understated first section turns into a just-freewheeling-enough jam -- it works. There's even what could almost be an attempt at reggae, though that seems more something by accident than by plan, and by the time everything settles into a fine space rock chug into the infinite, the result is groovy fun, man. "American Mother" takes a more self-consciously epic stance from the start and gets away with it beautifully, with opening guitar that can only be described as heroic and an overall flow that sounds perfect for an easygoing drive down desert highways while chasing the sun. Extra points for the mellotron fake string action at the end as well. Other excursions into varying styles sometimes smack of dilettantism for its own sake, but things like the brief fragment "Calapso" and the goofy country drawling and strumming of "Molly Bake Bean" project good-natured humor more than anything else.

 

Tracklist:

 

Help Yourself - Help Yourself

1. Help Yourself - I Must See Jesus for Myself

2. Help Yourself - To Katherine They Fell

3. Help Yourself - Your Eyes Are Looking Down

4. Help Yourself - Old Man

5. Help Yourself - Look at the View

6. Help Yourself - Paper Leaves

7. Help Yourself - Running Down Deep

8. Help Yourself - Deborah

9. Help Yourself - Street Songs

Help Yourself - Beware The Shadow

10. Help Yourself - Alabama Lady

11. Help Yourself - Reaffirmation

12. Help Yourself - Calapso

13. Help Yourself - She's My Girl

14. Help Yourself - Molly Bake Bean

15. Help Yourself - American Mother

16. Help Yourself - Passing Through

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