Can - Halleluwah

So imagine a german modern classical musician went to New York and met Andy Warhol and more importantly, seen the velvet underground.  So he goes back home and recruits a bunch of friends who don't particularly listen to rock music and they form a rock band.  Their first singer has a nervous breakdown after the release of their first album.  So they recruit a busker off the street despite (or possibly because of) the fact that he knows only three chords and is making up the songs off the top of his head.  With their perfect lineup coalesced they retreat to a castle and record their masterpiece.


Halleluwah is almost certainly the strangest song you'll hear today.  Like the majority of Can songs, it is more about setting up a hypnotic pulse that keeps you drawn into it's continuing evolving nature.  The drums here are sumptuous, laying down a pattern at once simple and complex (when Martin Hannett said "faster but slower" he might as well have been talking about Jaki Liebezeit) and complemented by a bassline that could stand amongst the best in funk.

The importance of the rythm section to Can really can't be overstated.  They're the grounding that allow the 18 minutes to flow into one steady hypnotic pulse.  You can find many precursors in their idea, not least of which being trances ideas of these prolonged explorations of sound, grounded purely in the pulsing motorik beat.  The drums begin to overlay each other, till the track takes on a pounding, pulsating hypnotic thrum driving ever onwards.

Over that endless rythm, guitars and keyboard duel and intertwine, transitioning therough funk, to protracted portions of ambience, to huge arpeggios of madness that peak in heavenly chords that shine like sun burst through clouds, back to the heady funk jam that grounds the whole experience, bringing you back to that feel of cruising along highways on a warm summers day.

Your guide speaks nonsense, but it's irrelevant.  His voice serves as your path through the jams and explorations, bringing warped fuzzy sounding melody to the chaos.    Though what he's saying is mostly indecipherable, when the clearest lyric in the song is simply him crying out other song titles from the album Halleluwah comes from, it becomes clear he doesn't much care about words as tone.

Most importantly of all, this song rocks.  Quite apart from it's psychedelic, hypnotic nature, it's simply a great riff and a fantastic chorus.  Cut this down to a three minute song as Can easily could have and Halleluwah would probably enjoy an even stronger reputation as a rock song of the era.  In it's extended state, it's probably too inaccessible to get that kind of play.

But that length, those prolonged explorations elevate this song from being a great rock song to a musical journey through thousands of different spaces, while keeping you endlessly grounded with an amazing riff and pounding drums.

Posted in: Can, Halleluwah, Music, Music Review, Prog, Psychedelic, Review, Rock, Tago Mago