Liner Notes
(CD/LP, Ruf Records RUF 1287)
Germany / United Kingdom / Europe
Chapman's first all-new studio album in 12 years. Eleven tracks co-written and produced by John "Poli" Palmer (ex-Family).
Tracklist:
1. Dark Side of the Stars
2. The Playtime Is Over
3. Nightmare #5
4. Rabbit Got The Gun
5. After The Rain
6. Having Us A Honey Moon
7. Snake
8. On Lavender Heights
9. Green As Guacamole (GAG)
10. Collar Turned Up
11. Naughty Child
Album Reviews2
Reviews gathered with this release and kept on the album page rather than in the general Press Archive.
Life in the Pond — Get Ready to ROCK! review
Contemporary review. Pete Feenstra gives Life in the Pond four stars and calls it Chapman’s most lyrically driven album since the early Family years. The familiar anger remains, but its delivery is more reflective: colourful imagery, wordplay and humour take precedence over the old bluster.
Poli Palmer’s production is praised for using electronic colour without crowding Chapman’s voice. Feenstra moves through the angular funk of “Dark Side of the Stairs,” the darker pulse of “Nightmare #5,” the restrained “On Lavender Heights,” the zydeco flavour of “Having Us a Honey Moon” and the Northern Soul inheritance of “The Snake.” He finds one arrangement less convincing, but concludes that the subtle textures generally serve the songs and make the album a genuine late-career return to form.
Life in the Pond — Prog review
Contemporary review. Mike Barnes hears Chapman’s first studio album in twelve years as a record informed by his entire career. Poli Palmer’s production and keyboards supply much of its colour, with Geoff Whitehorn prominent on lead guitar, but the songs move between rock and roll, soul and blues rather than simply recreating an earlier Family sound.
Barnes finds Chapman’s weathered voice well suited to the material. “Rabbit Got the Gun” receives the most intricate arrangement, while the sparse, drumless “On Lavender Heights” has the elegiac atmosphere of a Tom Waits ballad. “Naughty Child” looks back at the 1960s with wryness rather than sentimentality, and the political anger elsewhere suggests that at 79 Chapman still has both work and subject matter ahead of him.
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