Sunday, July 9, 2017

Supertramp - Indelibly Stamped


Released 25 June 1971
A&M Records - AMLH 64306
Indelibly Stamped is very much a transition album. When you listen to Supertramp, the eponymous first album, it feels like the sort of psychedelic/progressive art pop that might emerge from Pink Floyd or Traffic. There’s a Progressive feel to both the lyrics (all written by Richard Palmer-James) and many of the songs. But Indelibly Stamped is different, it is positively eclectic. Apart from Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson the rest of the band had changed between the first and the second album. They’d lost Palmer-James, their lyricist, guitarist and vocalist and Millar their drummer. If you are being charitable you could say that with a new band (Dave Winthrop on flute and saxophone, Frank Farrell on bass and accordion and Kevin Currie on drums) Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson were just trying out a variety of styles to see what worked best. If you are being uncharitable you could say that the album didn’t hang together and was a random collection of songs. Many of the reviews you can read of Indelibly Stamped are fairly negative, but personally I have always had a soft spot for this album.
Of course, the first thing that hits you about this LP is the cover – a heavily tattooed woman with bare breasts. The model, Marion Hollier, was apparently paid £45 for the photo shoot. The original LP has a nice colour gatefold sleeve – mysteriously toned down to a black and white photograph for the CD release in 1982. It is rumoured that in the US A&M put gold stars on the outside of the shrinkwrap to cover up the nipples, but I’ve never seen an example. I have no idea what the relevance of the cover is to the music or why the album is called Indelibly Stamped. I just know I was 15 when I first bought this LP, so the cover made quite an impression. It’s gatefold sleeve with….

So what of the music? The album opens with Your Poppa Don’t Mind, which is well bluesy and a bit poppy, clearly a Davies composition. Travelled, a Hodgson composition is one of my favourite tracks on the album, a strong melody accompanied by Dave Winthrop on flute - something which still has a bit of a progressive feel to it. But them we are into Rosie Had Everything Planned which is the exact opposite. A slightly plodding tune, with an accordion riff, but tackling the unusual subject matter of a housewife waiting in the garden to murder her possibly unfaithful husband. Uniquely among Supertramp songs, it is credited to Hodgson and Francis Farrell the bass player (and accordionist).[As a side note Farrell later co-wrote the No.1 hit Moonlighting with Leo Sayer, but I digress.] Side one closes with Remember, a straight rock number and Forever which is more minimalist R’n’B. My guess would be they are both Davies compositions.

As this is vinyl we now have side two which opens with Dave Winthrop on vocals singing Potter, a bit more of a straightforward rock song. The next track by contrast, once it gets going after a hony-tonk introduction, Coming Home to See You is almost a bit of a boogie.  Times Have Changed was apparently a re-worked idea from the first album which is followed by the rather short Friend in Need. This is a little ditty of a song, almost McCartneyesque, and is quite a contrast to the closing track, Aries. Clocking in at 7’25” it is easily the longest track on the album, it’s a short folk-rock song with accompanying flute and a very long repetitive fadeout (a bit like Crime of the Century but less polished).
The sound of Indelibly Stamped is a bit patchy, a bit raw. The band themselves produced both of their first two albums and it shows. The vocals wander around in the mix and often the music can become a bit murky and lacking in definition. Three years later, the follow-up album, Crime of the Century, was to be their big break. Yet again Davies and Hodgson had changed all the other members of the band. But was it a coincidence that this time they had also brought in Ken Scott to produce it? The rest, as they say, is history.