Search - Bevis Frond :: Son of Walter

How does he do it?

Scott Richardson | Chicago, IL USA | 02/02/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"How does Nick Saloman pull it off? Every year he releases a double-album's worth of material (sometimes more), and every one is fantastic. Son of Walter is no different.Displaying his range, Saloman (aka Bevis Frond) whips out pop-rock gems (Beautiful Sister, Winner's Way, It's Not Like You), psychedelic freak-outs (Garden Aeroplane Trap, All Hope is Gone With You Away), and some of the most honest and depressing songs ever written (Plastic Elvis, Dead Man Sitting on a Train), seemingly without breaking a sweat.Recorded entirely at home by Saloman himself (and featuring Saloman on all instruments and vocals) "Walter" may fall a _little_ short of his high-water mark (probably "New River Head," but every record is so good it's hard to pin down his "best" work), but overall it's a fantastic record."

How come there aren't many one-man bands around today?

29-year old wallflower | West Lafayette, IN | 01/31/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Multi-track recording is a relatively new phenomenon in the music business. Sure, you had two-track recording way back in the 1950s, but that was nothing compared to 4-track & later 8-track. In fact, The Beatles recorded SGT. PEPPER completely on a 4-track process, causing them to invent ways to get all their ingenious ideas onto tape, some of them becoming standard practice in the recording industry. But multi-track recording also allows an artist to play more than one instrument himself, sometimes even all. Prince certainly exploited this possibility many times, as has Lenny Kravitz & a little-known Canadian artist who goes under the name of Smog. But a British guy should be named to that list, Mr. Nick Saloman, better known as Bevis Frond.Saloman has been creating little-known masterpieces since 1987's MIASMA, which established his propensity for vintage hard rock & metal before Mr. Kravitz made it his stock in trade. Saloman turned out to be intensely prolific, turning out epics like 1988's TRIPTYCH, 1990's ANY GAS FASTER, 1991's NEW RIVER HEAD (widely thought to be his crowning acheivement) & 1994's SPRAWL (featuring a 21-minute jam called "Right On [Hippie Dream]"). All of those albums really exploited the long length of CDs to the fullest, with them nearly reaching the 80-minute mark or more. Another one of those albums was 1996's SON OF WALTER.Most of Bevis Frond's earliest albums were recorded with Nick Saloman playing all the instruments, really giving the records a homemade feel. Then he started working with others, which may have resulted in better-conceived & sounding albums, but the intimacy was lost. SON OF WALTER has Saloman back to doing it all himself & the results are similar to all of his albums: some songs work better than others, but the ones that do work are more than not.Just about every song has the sludgy guitar sound that Black Sabbath helped pioneer modern heavy metal with. The deafening sound is certainly present on "All Hope Is Gone Away With You", "Red Hair" (the vocal manages to rise above the sonic assault), "Winner's Way" (could have been an excellent single), "Barking Or False Point Blues" (straight out of a Cream jam session) & "Garden Aeroplane Trap" (the album's true epic at over 12 minutes).But don't think Saloman is all volume & no substance. Songs like "Forgiven" could easily have been at home on a Cat Stevens album & is a great chance to hear just how good a songwriter Saloman is. "Requiem" has Nick (sounding like Elvis Costello gone Vanilla Fudge) trading in his fuzz pedal for an electric organ on a 9-minute tune that would have been an excellent encore for Led Zeppelin back in the day (just picture John Paul Jones showing his chops as an organist). "You Saw Me Coming [But You Won't See Me Go]" is one of the more pop-oriented songs that has Nick harmonizing with himself, sounding almost Beatlesque. The closing "Goodnight From The Band" is another acoustic-based track that has Nick saying goodbye until the next album, which of course was not a long time in coming.As expected, SON OF WALTER isn't an all-around stunner (after all, coming up with 15 great songs is no easy feat). But Nick Saloman may have intended variety to be the key factor & on that, he certainly succeeded. Bevis Frond may be just a name to hide under, but you still get the idea that maybe Nick didn't & couldn't have done it all by himself, especially with the speed at which he turns out music. His masterpiece may still be somewhere down the road, but epics like SON OF WALTER will be good to hear an artist/band where variety & quantity are more important than quality & strangely enough, it works."