Cheap Hummingbird (Music) (Wakeman & Cousins) Price

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Customer Reviews of Hummingbird

Not a Strawbs album but sounds very like
Apparently Wakeman and Cousins spent a few afternoons at Cousin's house tinkering with some tracks that Dave had written and came up with an album called Hummingbird. They enlisted a couple of old stalwarts such as Ric Sanders, Chas Cronk and Tony Fernandez, got Rick's girlfriend to paint the cover, and stuck it out on the ether.

As a result, it's the kind of album which two old musos would like to write and play together, with no record company pressures and expectations of a demanding public to live up to. If you're a Strawbs fan you will probably like this album. It's not completely Strawbs, but there is enough flavour there in Cousin's unmistakeable vocals and writing for you to categorise it under your Strawbs collection rather than your Wakeman collection.

Wakeman is prominent on the album in most of the tracks but he keeps himself from dominating, and sounds in fact more like he did when he was with the Strawbs than he does during his Yes forays. It's like he's put on an old coat and found it still fitted (which is probably unlikely - oh that's mean.)

The album is a mix of folk rock, acoustic ballads and instrumentals, both acoustic and electric with input from violin (Ric Sanders) and Wakeman's piano and synthesizers. Cousins plays guitar, banjo and DULCIMER which gives it an extra star in my rating anyway.

The Young Pretender and All In Vain sound VERY similar to old Strawbs favourites like The Hangman and the Papist - good folk rockers with some thumping rhythmic piano from Rick and trademark enigmatic lyrics from Cousins (who's it all about, the Young Pretender anyway?) There are some really beautiful songs like Can You Believe which is a soft, sad ballad about looking back and the passing of time - very apt to this album.

Wakeman contributes some solo instrumental pieces that really shine such as Crie du Coeur (piano) and Via Bencini (keyboard clarinet arrangement - pity he didn't dust off the clarinet and play that but can't have everything.) Steppes is a short, melancholy piece which has just an echo or two of Temperament of Mind, a piano number from the Strawbs concert at Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1970, which Wakeman, always the opportunist, improvised during a short power outage and Got Noticed by the Press. A nice nod here.

Other standout tracks are Forever Ocean Blue, another Cousins ballad, and Higher Germaine, a historical narrative with some lovely dark romantic piano swirls by Wakeman, aching electric violin from Sanders, and oh, that dulcimer.

All in all this is a very good album if you are a Strawbs, Wakeman or just a music fan. It's well balanced, well written and very well played by everyone - I'm sure it won't disappoint you if you buy it and are one of the above.