Humble Pie: Eat It - 1973

It was the seventies, so what did everyone release? Exactly. A double album. This was the Pie's double header.

I won't go into a track-by-track analysis, (double albums tend to have that effect on me!) but suffice to say the album is Humble Pie's best-sounding one thus far, full of deep, warm bass and a lot of Steve Marriott's afore-mentioned soulful instincts coming to the fore. It is not as blatantly heavy as Smokin', featuring a bit more subtlety and craftsmanship on many of the songs. 

As always with their albums, they start well, with two bluesy boogie rockers in Get Down To It and the superbly-titled Good Booze And Bad Women before going soulful on the slow-pace rock/soul ballad Is It For Love? These are followed by the top notch riffing of Drugstore Cowboy, which features a beautifully rumbling bassline, and the impressive flinty blues rock of Black Coffee. The descriptions of these songs are probably enough to give an accurate flavour of the album's early section. One could survive just listening to this part of it, if you were pushed for time.

Although too long, as double albums always are, bulked out by some live material, it is a really fine-sounding and enjoyable album that is easily up there with its two fine predecessors. It's packed full of riffy, gritty boogie rock with blues, soul and funk hints popping up regularly. There is also an acoustic/folky section of three songs - Say No More, Oh Bella (That's All Hers) and Summer Song, The soul songs are all covers - I Believe To My Soul, Shut Up And Don't Interrupt Me and That's How Strong My Love Is. 

The album follows a pattern of side one being boogie rock, side two soul, side three folk and side four live cuts. Because of the excellent production and sound quality it could arguably be the band's best offering. I have loved revisiting it. Humble Pie really were most underrated, in my opinion. There was simply so much great stuff around in 1973 that they unfortunately went under the radar for many, including myself at the time.

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