It's timely that just as we're reviewing a limited edition mini-album from their Ellis Island Sound project that Peter Astor and cohort David Sheppard should re-emerge with new material as THE WISDOM OF HARRY.
And, while TWOH also have a penchant for atmospheric, soundtrack-style instrumentals, they are largely the vehicle for Peter Astor's still-lovely songs, so it probably won't surprise those of you out there who go back to The Weather Prophets and beyond that "Crash Helmet" is another of those idiosyncratically great slivers he can pluck from the air from time to time.
Typically, he makes it all sound so easy here. I mean, by rights, "Crash Helmet" shouldn't work at all. It's lazy; it sparkles and chimes like an updated "Sunday Morning" by The Velvets; it has virtually no punch and its' offbeat message of spirituality and search for guidance is delivered in that wonderful just-woken-up voice Astor has been pioneering for some time. However, come your third listen you're entirely smitten and charmed to hell by those beautifully laconic guitars and featherweight drums and begin wondering how you ever managed without them in your life. "And I saw Jesus down at Safeway today" mumbles Astor at one point. Really? Think you're wrong on that one, mate : it's definitely Tesco's - meat counter. Check it out.
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But I digress. Erstwhile B-side "The Grey Dog Of Lonely" revisits and slows down the Bontempi-generated beats utilised by Astor and Sheppard on Ellis Island Sound's "Home Service", slows them down to virtually funereal and cloaks them in ennui, torpor, a pea souper of atmosphere and tantalises further by signing off with a beautiful vibrato guitar bit that you're dying to hear developed further.
Astor's delivery here, meanwhile, makes "Crash Helmet" sound like Pinky & Perky, such is its' fabulous listlessness. "The grey dog of lonely came to my house today, now it's just him and me, and terrible TV" he stumbles, before going on to sing "having so much fun" like he'd sooner be strangled. Oh, in case you were wondering, the end results are wonderful, incidentally.
So there you have it. The Wisdom Of Harry bumble around bending rules, tinkering away and yawning and they still turn in something entirely unmissable. They make a mockery of this pop lark and you love them all the more for it. Tremendous.
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