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Deeper in the heart of Argent
Rod takes to Ray Telford about the new LP
"IN DEEP" is the title of Argent's fourth album and as such represents the group's first real major musical advancement since they formed three and a half years ago amidst a whole mass of enthusiasm and silver tongued praise.
But in many ways it's taken Argent the space of four albums to shake loose from their past image of purveyors of flimsy and delicately constructed pop songs and to come up with something slightly deeper rooted.
The group's first album, for example, Rod Argent agrees, was very much on one level ideas wise and he also willingly accepts the notion that the following two albums, though both revealed an obvious desire within the band to widen their scope in all directions, were still very much inward looking and, to a point, even incestuous.
The fact remains, however, that all Argent's albums to date have been as near perfect, in their own style, as you're likely to hear these days and in past interviews Rod has taken care to make it known that in the studio the group are nothing short of insatiable perfectionists.
Despite the misgivings of the first album for instance in terms of texture and feel, the actual music laid down was breathtaking for its sparkling consistency.
In his notes on the inside sleeve of "In Deep" Rod explains that the idea behind the album was to make it one of "textures and contrasts" and this they've achieved chiefly through the greater manipulation of the group's three front-line voices plus a more-open instrumental approach:
"The voices on the album were especially important in that respect," said Rod. "We'd been working on this thing where we wanted to use voices more as lead instruments and we took a lot of care to make sure they came across that way."
I mentioned also that the production techniques used on "In Deep" sounded a great deal more adventurous and enterprising than on the previous three albums. Rod refuses, however, to bend to the theory that the main forte of any good album is in its production:
"I think a lot of people tend to get too wound up or place too much importance on production for the wrong reasons. Of course a good production job is crucial to any good album but the music has to be all there in the first place."
Among the most striking feature on the new album undoubtedly lies in the combined strength and sheer energy force of the Argent rhythm section which, again, on previous albums has tended to be underplayed and this has also constituted one of the main differences in the past between the group as a live entity and as a recording unit:
"I know the first two albums didn't really represent the group as we were live," said Rod in reflective tone. "Neither of them had the atmosphere that we create on live gigs but that's a hangup I think most bands inevitably run into. The new album, though, has been the easiest one of all to record because we were lucky in that we managed to hit the right groove in the studio very easily and very quickly."
The possibility of Argent putting together a live album in the forseeable future, Rod says, is unlikely: "At this stage I don't think a live album would be very beneficial to us. In fact it's be a superfluous kind of thing for us to do because there's so much more we want to do in the studio — just things like all the new ideas Russ (Ballard) has in mind, in fact the whole group have a lot of ideas individually which I think we'll have to let come to the fore before we do anything like a live record."
Shortly after Argent had released their second album, Rod was quoted as saying that it would take approximately four albums for them to reach anything near their full potential and in retrospect he finds no reason to change that opinion:
Energy
"I think it was very obvious to us right from the very beginning that it wasn't going to be the kind of group who did things with sudden bursts of energy. Four albums might seem like a hell of a long time to wait for THE album but at the same time that doesn't mean we discount or ignore the previous three because they were steps in our development and at the time they were recorded that's where we were at.
"It's like what I said earlier about the way we work in the studio, we have to feel our way into recording the same way as we have to feel our way into gigs so obviously it's going to take time for us to get exactly what we want."
Stagnant
Argent, no way, can be accused of being a stagnant band. The constant changes, both in the group's mental and instrumental approach to their music, which can be seen as a fluid progression throughout all their records to date, is proof enough of that. For instance in the space of three years they've successfully absorbed everything from the hairiest of modern jazz composers to the music of James Brown and that's a fact, which, once again, is very evident to anyone who's taken the time out to get into each of the band's albums in turn.
For the future you're left only to guess what Argent will continue their quest for perfection... they'll never reach it of course, at least not in the eyes of Rod Argent.
