Vertigo 1970 / Think Like A Key 2026
Heavy Petting
Éire legends change their charge and add riffs to the fire, with a teenage guitar hero of the future checking in.
Remembered today for all the not-wrong-yet-tangential reasons – the Roger Dean cover or the adolescent Gary Moore’s licks on a few of the tracks – this band’s sophomore offering became a major achievement in folk-rock history in a different way, because it marked not only their creative progress. The most important shift in the Irish musicians’ modus operandi, as outlined by the album, was the ensemble’s acceptance of electric sound: that’s what the platter’s title partially refers to. Refusing to share the acoustic terrain with TÍR NA NÓG, but not embracing the heaviness HORSLIPS would come to harness, DR. STRANGELY STRANGE also adjusted their tunes to fit the new agenda, and – instead of shouting “Judas!” – the collective’s followers still cherish the results.
The trio of Tim Booth, Ivan Pawle and Tim Goulding may have remained within the traditional idiom, only they forged ahead, the distance from the innocence of 1969’s “Kip Of The Serenes” growing day after day, as the recordings on the expanded reissue of “Heavy Petting” suggest. There are pieces laid down both before and after the album took shape – and even a smattering of numbers performed, unplugged, at London’s Les Cousins during the initial span of sessions, with two yet-to-be-nailed cuts presented to the public – and they clearly show that the ensemble had never been as focused as they were when their second longplay, produced by Joe Boyd, promised a breakthrough. With this 55th-anniversary reissue proposing a subtle remix to expose nuances previously sealed and concealed in the grooves, the group’s grace couldn’t seem more apparent.
It’s quite obvious from a comparison of the first, instrumental take on “Gave My Love An Apple” with the track’s final form, where Goulding’s piano and Pawle’s organ glue the rhythmic patterns Dave Mattacks’s drums and Brush Shiels’s bass apply to Booth’s waltz-cum-boogie while Moore’s fingers weave wonders. The same mirth and warmth fill opener “Ballad Of The Wasps” – whose mandolin and bouzouki, plus an a cappella passage, paint Dublin Hills as the Appalachian Mountains – but though the sorrowful, albeit hopeful, “Summer Breeze” projects a riff-bolstered bluesy charm, and the brief “I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes” reveals a harmonium-driven hymn that three voices deliver with utter magnificence, “Kilmanoyadd Stomp” marries spirituality to fairground humor just as effectively. However, pride of place on the platter is given to “Sign On My Mind”: the mini-epic hints at endless possibilities the collective might have pursued had they fleshed out their core with a stable concert line-up and brought their friends to the studio, as Gary’s passionately subdued lines, tightly tied into a solo, elevate Ivan’s whistle-embroidered aural panorama to universal heights.
By the time it landed on plastic, “Jove Was At Home” was a staple of the combo’s repertoire, the number’s rendition on “Top Gear” – one of the live tracks on the bonus disc of this set – proving their confidence in the early chestnut, yet the glockenspiel and сhoral vocals make it special. In its turn, “Ashling” adds psychedelic sensibilities – and, in front of the audience, a fiddle – to the group’s homespun idyll, which becomes rather worrisome until the tempo changes of “Mary Malone Of Moscow” remove anxiety to instill a “cosmic joke” into the record’s flow. Next to them, “When Adam Delved” highlights the trio’s baroque leanings – another tentative way to unfurl their wares, which stayed hermetic, and “Goodnight My Friends” unfolds polyphonic grandeur to set glory at the album’s close.
Sadly, similar splendor had left the building once the ensemble embarked on their third full-length endeavor, with some fresh and some old pieces, now appended to “Heavy Petting” as a logical continuation of the Irishmen’s journey. Those tracks sound robust, but magic is not there, as the too-polished “Lady Of The Glen” demonstrates. Nevertheless, the vibrant “Horse Of A Different Hue” gained gravity on stage, as documented in the “In Concert” segment of this package, alongside “Sweet Red Rape” – left off the band’s second album to free up the space for the likes of “Ballad Of The Wasps,” which also landed in the Beeb’s radio programme. A fine round-off and roundup of the platter’s context, the anniversary edition has great historic value.
*****
