The Web - 1970 - I Spider

The Web 

1970

I Spider

01. Concerto for Bedsprings (10:10) :

- a. I Can't Sleep

- b. Sack Song

- c. Peaceful Sleep

- d. You Can Keep the Good Life

- e. Loner

02. I Spider (8:30)

03. Love You (5:21)

04. Ymphasomniac (6:43)

05. Always I Wait (8:10)

Bonus tracks on 2008 Esoteric remaster:

06. Concerto for Bedsprings (live) (10:40)

07. Love You (live) (4:22)

Dave Lawson / vocals, piano, organ, Mellotron, harpsichord, producer (6,7)

Tony Edwards / electric & acoustic guitars

Tom Harris / tenor & soprano saxophones, concert & alto flutes, tambourine

John Eaton / bass, cabassa

Lennie Wright / drums, timpani, congas, güiro, vibes, co-producer

Kenny Beveridge / drums, bongos, woodblock, jawbone

I Spider (1970) is the third and final album by the Web before morphing into Samurai. Although I know this was the first album of theirs that I had heard, it's one of those funny things in which I don't recall how I became even basically acquainted with them, or even remotely when exactly. A nice, mysterious block of whitespace in the ol' history books, eh? I certainly would consider it an if-you-know-it-you-know-it's-a-classic sort of album; no purpose in gatekeeping this for the masses; it's just Prog Obscura, Prog for Prog fans(?). Anyhow... Most notable to me now, a recent realization in fact, is that this is the entry point of keyboard-vocalist Dave Lawson (best known from Greenslade). Being the shift to [traditional] keys, as well as the key vocalist (replacing John Watson), Lawson also "assumed the leadership" of Samurai post-name-change.

Our album begins with the 10-minute mini-epic, wonderfully entitled "Concerto for Bedsprings". There is a dark, even unsettling eeriness to me that feels perhaps like VdGG. This is substantiated further by the swirling, uneven rhythm and crying saxophone starting around minute 2. And a second major shift occurs before minute 3; absolutely wondrous. This feels so out of time, yet I find I could often enough say the same thing about their contemporaries in Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago; all that to say, compliments all 'round: beautiful and dreamy Jazz. Dave Lawson, it should be noted, next to his absolutely lovely keyboard performance, has a voice that will likely polarize, but is very of the time; gruff and dramatic [Not dissimilar to vocal performances found in early, early Heavy Metal music]. Not quite to that effect, but musically they do have roots the same as Arthur Brown and Atomic Rooster. This track is strong. Great opener; perhaps 'Essential'.

Up next on our 5-song album is the title track, "I Spider", moody and dramatic in its soft-spoken, yet simultaneously booming arrangements, with quieted horns, sizeable rhythm section and Dave's phenomenal vibrato. It has a dirge-like quality. In the middle section, over blasted tom-toms, the guitar slices roughly through the air, pitted against the dynamic breaths of sax. Melancholy continues on "Love You". Much less of an immediate statement as the two that came before, "Love You" halts then picks back up with haste. Now I must know how Lawson and Co. felt about Hammill and the rest of Van der Graaf, and vice versa... It's not uncanny, or anything, but the similarities are impossible for me not to make. Second thoughts showed how similar this is to my ears to the well-known Greenslade track-turned-theme-song "Gangsters" 5 years later (though it's actually an essential in my opinion).

Then we have the very cool "Ymphasomniac". Awesome stuff going on rhythmically, as it slips and slides around in a sort of circle. Also, consider the tones used for keyboard. This track allows percussion to really shine, with a break around minute 2. Even when the mood brightens, the band is just so cool and collected. Sick, groovy jam. We even get a bright, airy vibes solo! Up next, "Always I Wait" had me just stop what I was doing and softly proclaim, 'Damn.' This is just unbelievably cool for 1970. A mindblower, if you ask me. What Dave is doing on the organ especially is just melting me; thankfully I'm sober enough to stay upright (I mean, I have to finish this review haha). Everyone is keeping the f*ck up! This band was phenomenal at their best, truly phenomenal. Once again, Tony Edwards on guitar trades off, but this time with vibraphonist Lennie Wright, apparently one of two drummers (I don't know how I had missed that detail until now). Anyhow, this is the best track on the album (my partner hates Dave Lawson's voice haha; I'm a definite fan of all of it). [Perhaps, though, your hipster girlfriend can agree with the rest as well.]

Out with the old, in with the new: gone was John L. Watson, standing, or rather sitting at the keyboards. In his stead came Dave Lawson, and in celebration of his ensnarement by the band, gone too was the "The" in Web. The new-look Web released the group's third and final album, I Spider, in 1970. It was also their best, bringing to fruition the group's sound and leaving behind the rather stumbling genre experimentations of yesteryear. Moving strongly into progressive rock, the band strode far afield from the psychedelic meanderings they'd undertaken on their last set, Theraphosa Blondi. Lawson's fabulous organ playing was now the band's fulcrum, filling the album with rich and (especially on the title track) haunting atmospheres, as well as providing a fixed point from which the rest of the band could swoop off in their own directions. If "I Spider" is the album's most evocative track, the epic set opener "Concerto for Bedsprings" is its most magnificent. Its passages shift in moods and style, with the jazz-inspired "Sack Song" section particularly impressive, while the aggressive "You Can Keep the Good Life" is as hard-edged as any punk-fueled no wave band. Dramatic shifts in dynamic also drive "Love You," another showcase for horn player Tom Harris, with John Eaton's vicious, buzzing bassline powering the whole second half of the piece and providing furious encouragement to Tony Edwards' fuzz-drenched guitar. That number lies in the rock realm; "Ymphasomniac" leans toward jazz fusion but has unusually tasty bongoes and percussion solos as well, providing the bridge into the second pomp-rock half of the song. And that is the glory of this album, as most of the songs comprise two diametrically opposed halves, cleverly brought together either with a crash or with an inspired middle passage. The set's final track, "Always I Want," follows this pattern to perfection, as Lawson bemoans his lack of luck with the ladies, his rather crude lyrics hilariously at odds to the sophistication of the music itself. The group went out on a high with this superb set, which Akarma has reissued with its original, wondrously surreal artwork. Although Web disappeared soon after, the other members did not, swiftly returning under their new moniker, Samurai.