And last year’s fine effort brings the Van Der Graaf Generator saga to a close. Clocking in at just under an hour, Do Not Disturb is a curious effort. They three remaining members only worked together on the music for about two weeks (according to the wikibox), but it sounds much like another well-oiled VDG machine.
(Oh No I Must Have Said) Yes seems to be a response to the various failings of the electorate in the past year, though the recording was complete before, for example, the Brexit referendum…
But let’s not talk about the old days
except to say the consequences run,
to be plain, what’s over isn’t done
and you thought you were only having fun.
As always, most of the songs seem to contain epics within them, slow movements calmly orchestrated still go measure to measure with slamming drums, weirdly overlaid vocals, and histrionic keyboards, but if they didn’t, we’d question whether we were listening to the right band.
It’s definitely good stuff, but not the gut-grabbing musical assault that we were once used to.
I realised there’s another live recording: Live at Maida Vale, recorded at the BBC in 2010 and released in 2012. It’s not on the band’s Wikipedia discography, but it’s up on Spotify. I’ll probably give that a listen next week.
Joe Jots 