Supertramp - Indelibly Stamped

Released - June 1971

Genre - Rock

Producer - Supertramp

Selected Personnel - Roger Hodgson (Guitar/Bass/Vocals); Rick Davies (Keyboards/Harmonica/Vocals); Frank Farrell (Bass/Piano/Accordion); Dave Winthrop (Flute/Saxophone/Vocals); Kevin Currie (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Travelled

This is inevitably one of those albums people will only ever hear when they have an almost inexhaustible love for Supertramp that leads them way beyond the safety of their successful albums. It doesn't even have the clout or interest value of being their debut, it's little more than an underperforming, undervalued obscurity from their very early days before they discovered any sort of signature sound or any degree or critical or commercial success. As is so often the case with such albums, that's a terrible shame as it contains some great music even if it is a long way from being their best. I discovered Inevitably Stamped after I'd been listening to Supertramp for about four years, gradually expanding my understanding and appreciation of them and slowly giving in to the urge to just track down everything they ever did and get a handle on the entire discography. It's a curious specimen as it shows them moving decidedly away from the typical early 70s prog stylings of their self-titled debut and beginning to develop something more of the identity that would come to define the band, though the music itself remains in a curious in-between stage as they begin to push towards the sound of Crime Of The Century onwards.

The release of the Supertramp album went pretty much unnoticed by the general public, though it received its fair due of critical appreciation. In the wake of its underperformance, pretty much the entire band disintegrated around the core creative duo of Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies, with first guitarist and lyricist Richard Palmer-James jumping ship, followed swiftly by drummer Robert Millar. An interim version of the band was amassed for the followup album, although this iteration of the lineup was doomed to not last long. Kevin Currie was recruited on drums with Frank Farrell on bass and piano (though bass duties continued to be shared alongside Hodgson, and Davies contributed the majority of the keyboard parts), but the most significant new addition was flautist and saxophonist Dave Winthrop (who also sings lead vocals on the atrocious "Potter"). While Winthrop himself didn't last long, his addition demonstrates that Davies and Hodgson had recognised the need to expand the band's musical pallette and structure by adding a permanent member on wind instruments, paving the way for the recruitment of John Helliwell and the saxophone solos that would become one of the band's trademarks. Hodgson has since confessed that Indelibly Stamped was a desperate attempt to justify the band's existence to their financial backer, Stanley August Miesegaes. Their early attempts at out-and-out prog rock had failed to strike a chord with the listening public, so in many ways Indelibly Stamped is a conscious effort to keep things simpler, to shy away from excess and make a simpler traditional rock album while keeping the broad musical pallette of the debut.

Perhaps the most significant thing that makes this album significant in the Supertramp discography is that it marks the first time that the musical influences and personalities of Davies and Hodgson began working independently and pulling the album in different directions. It's an interplay that generally created albums of stunning diversity and versatility and only rarely resulted in creative deadlocks and personal differences (though these would gradually escalate before Hodgson's inevitable departure in the 80s). Though every Supertramp song was credited jointly to Davies and Hodgson, generally every song was written by whoever sang it, and in recent years (largely due to the ego of Hodgson, who has gone about retroactively claiming ownership of most of the band's big hits) there has been more of an effort to attribute each song to its owner. On Indelibly Stamped, some of the credits still aren't clear (whoever wrote "Potter" has a lot to answer for), so I've stuck with the joint credits, but one can assume from Davies's sudden leap to lead vocalist on most songs, having only sung co-lead on one song on the previous album, that he was responsible for the majority. And the songs' musical styles would bear that out - the songs on which Hodgson sings lead are all more acoustic, pastoral songs in the vein of "Words Unspoken" from Supertramp, while Davies's songs are more bluesy rockers or jazzy ballads. Whereas previously they'd attempted to make those disparate styles gel together in one song, here the songs stand apart and it makes for an interesting record of two halves.

Whereas Hodgson penned most of the big hits in Supertramp's back catalogue, it's often the Davies songs that I come back to most often, generally being more musically complex and ambitious than the more radio-friendly pop music Hodgson would come to excel at, but Indelibly Stamped is one of the few albums where Hodgson's contributions outdo Davies's. "Travelled" is a superb song, opening with plangent recorders before turning into a fine piece of Pentangle-esque folk rock augmented by Winthrop's frenetic sax solo. "Rosie Had Everything Planned" is another magnificent song, a simple melody to die for and an old-fashioned Beatles-esque riff making it one of the catchiest, and loveliest, songs in the band's discography. "Aries" is the other great Hodgson track, being the closest thing here to their earlier prog style, an extended mostly instrumental jam over an acoustic riff and principally defined by Davies's swirling organ solos and Winthrop's reedy flute work. Davies's songs are by no means weak, however - "Remember" is a fine piece of horn-based blues rock with a great party vibe to it, and "Forever," while a little plodding in places, is just a very sweet and simple ballad that demonstrates how great Davies could be with little more than his voice and a couple of simple chords. Elsewhere, things get a little more forgettable, particularly on the album's rather weak second side, which only really has "Aries" to recommend it. Both "Coming Home To See You" and "Friend In Need" are jazzy piano-based shuffles, and the aforementioned "Potter" is ruined not only by Winthrop's unconvincing vocal but by its generally irritating melody and arrangement. Not only that, even when doing something genuinely enjoyable on the album's more out-and-out rock and roll moments such as "Remember" or "Your Poppa Don't Mind," there's a sense that conventional rock music just isn't what this band is cut out to do - it doesn't quite convince as being something they really had their hearts in. Perhaps the desperation and the urgency to do something commercially successful put too much pressure on the recording and resulted in something the band didn't fully believe in as it wasn't something they had made out of genuinely being inspired or motivated to do something.

But it by no means deserves its neglected status - it contains some of Hodgson's best songs, and it's a very interesting pointer towards where they would go next. Sadly, it would again fail to make any impact on the public at all, and resulted in Hodgson and Davies once again being abandoned by their fellow bandmates. Not only that, Miesegaes decided he'd gambled too much on this band to have them fail twice and withdrew their financial backing. Perhaps in doing so he gave the duo the spur they needed - they no longer had anybody to impress, so they could do what they like. They'd done out-and-out prog and they'd done out-and-out rock and roll, and neither had quite worked for them. Their next album would see them going further out of their way to unite those two approaches and in so doing, wind up creating what I still believe to this day is the greatest album of all time. It would take them another three years to do it, though.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson.

1. Your Poppa Don't Mind

2. Travelled

3. Rosie Had Everything Planned (Frank Farrell & Roger Hodgson)

4. Remember

5. Forever

6. Potter

7. Coming Home To See You

8. Times Have Changed

9. Friend In Need

10. Aries