Last year The Move high-tailed it over to Harvest/Capitol, after arriving at which they scarcely allowed themselves time for an iced tea and a smoke before bounding into the studio to cut the uniformly magnificent Message From The Country, which surely ranks right up there with Procol Harum's Broken Barricades as a prime contender for the title of 1971's best album.

Oh, they were in rosy humor when they did this one, were The Move, as is happily demonstrated by the high incidence of fun-poking and fun-having numbers therein.

"Ben Crawley Steel Co.," which concerns the evolution of a simple steel-drivin' man into a bomb-brandishing revolutionary, is a brilliant send-up of your actual truckdriver's country music, featuring an unspeakably charming and incontestably virile lead vocal in a register you probably had forgotten exists by super-stud Bev Bevan, who, just incidentally, is also one of the best rock and roll drummers in history. Relish the weirdly-phased falsetto backgrounds.

"No Time," a pretty acoustic number, features Wood blowing a recorder right off the hill the fool sits on and singing in a Bee Gee-tinged tenor with his chum Jeff Lynne. You'll be surprised to note that the P. Copestake to whom composition of this delicate flower is attributed was credited with "refreshments" on Looking On, the Move album released last December in England but sat on until just very recently by American Capitol.

"Don't Mess Me Up" would be virtually indistinguishable from a real Sun-period Elvis recording were it not for the characteristic exceptional clarity of the production and Bev's slightly too playful lead vocal. Everything else is just perfect, not the least of which is the guitar solo, which sounds as Scotty Moorish as any guitar solo has ever sounded. Why, they even put aside the ominously cantankerous monstro fuzz-bass that's come to be their most easily identifiable instrumental element and recorded the ride cymbal, which Wood likes not to record.

Bev's "The Minister" resembles The Beatles in general vocally, "Paperback Writer" in particular melodically, and Redbone vaguely in its riffy arrangement and use of Leslie-amplified guitar. A superb rocker, this one, as are the bruising "Ella James," which slightly reminds of McCartney's "Ooh You," and the Eddie Cochranish "Until Your Mama's Gone," with its bone-crushing bass-line, white-hot fuzz-guitars, and ruff-tuff vocal by Roy.

"My Marge" mixes "When I'm 64" instrumentation with a New Vaudeville Band vocal and a Between the Buttons conception of turn-of-the-century music. It's delightfully out-of-focus around the corners, with the bass voice and the tenor stepping all over one another's toes. A throwaway, but armfuls of wholesome fun for the entire family.

"The Words of Aaron" and the title cut (the latter Lynne's only composition on the album) are both classic Move -- mostly densely heavy but sometimes delicate backing, ingeniously and intricately assembled, with breathtaking vocal harmonies over strange and intriguing lyrics carried by beautiful tunes. Are those Ring-modulated trumpets or Roy Wood singing in his Ring-modulated trumpets voice?, you'll want to know halfway through "Message." And no one could blame you.

My own personal favorite is the album's opener, "It Wasn't My Idea," which finds Wood singing such perfectly cerebrum-sizzling lines as, "Now it's too late to want your freedom/It wasn't my idea to dance," with an hilariously straight musical comedy delivery (much like the one he employed on the bridge of 1967's "Flowers In The Rain") in front of the most sinister imaginable bass and imprudently dissonant Near Eastern woodwind choruses. How perfectly astonishing, you'll exclaim.

It may in fact be true that Roy Wood and his pals have not created something entirely new under the sun, but since when don't ingenious manipulation and clever innovation count for as much as genuine invention in rock and roll? Yes, at various times they are decidedly Creamy and Beatlish and Byrdsish and just slightly Bonzo Doggy, make no mistake, but for all their borrowing they're also one of the finest rock and roll bands you'll ever hear.

Don't deprive yourself of them for another instant.

© 1971 Rolling Stone

Transcribed by Lynn Hoskins

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