The Groundhogs

Split (BGO '71, Akarma '03) Rating: B+
One of the great things about writing reviews for this Web site is all the cool people and interesting music I've discovered over the years as a result of it. For example, one Tony Richardson over in the U.K. stumbled upon my site, we got to talking, and eventually struck up a friendship and an agreement to trade music. One of the cds Tony sent me was this one, and truth be told I wasn't especially familiar with The Groundhogs or their leader, singer-guitarist T.S. (Tony) McPhee. They were apparently pretty big in the U.K. in the early '70s, scoring 3 top 10 albums, and the consensus seems to be that the best of the bunch was 1971's Split (though the subsequent album, Thank Christ For The Bomb, seems to be a lot of people's favorite as well, including Mr. McPhee himself). With Ken Pustelnik (drums) and Pete Cruickshank (bass) rounding out their power trio lineup, the comparisons to Cream are inevitable, especially since McPhee's voice bears more than a slight resemblance to Jack Bruce. Fortunately, I like Bruce's (and McPhee's) voice, and McPhee is fond of using the wah wah pedals that Eric Clapton put away post-Cream, which I also heartily approve of. He's not a great songwriter, at least based on the evidence here, and the band are at times all over the place; tight they are not. Still, there's something about these guys, as their overall energy and reckless sense of abandon makes heavy yet trippy blues-based songs such as "Split, Pt. 1," "Split, Pt. 2," "Split, Pt. 4" (not the most imaginative of song titles, admittedly), and "Cherry Red" genuinely exciting and powerful. The band's sloppiness and the grungy overall sound is actually a plus when these riff-heavy songs inevitably evolve (or devolve, depending on how much you like that sort of thing) into improvised jams, though most of the songs manage to clock in at around a reasonable five minutes. The overriding lyrical theme concerns schizophrenia (in which case the song titles make sense), but it's the band's playing that counts, though song-wise I'll note that "Junkman" is particularly unstructured and "out there," while "Ground Hog" is the most like a straight up blues song. Although the band's sloppy-yet-explosive chemistry is undeniable and McPhee is certainly an impressive and imaginative (I'm pretty sure that even Jimi would have nodded along approvingly to the machine gun sounds on "Pt. 4," for example) guitar player, there's nothing especially extraordinary or groundbreaking about The Groundhogs, but if you want to dig up an obscure, ass kicking psychedelic hard rock album, Split will certainly fit the bill. Note: The four live bonus tracks on the reissue are nice to have but I prefer the more compact and still suitably dirty studio versions.

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