Fanny: Mother's Pride - 1973


The final album to feature the original Fanny line-up is possibly their best-known release. It is also the last in my batch of Fanny reviews. 

It begins with a mid-paced but powerful grind in Last Night I Had A Dream. The song has a big, muscular, bassy sound to it, which is a big contrast to the airily melodic stains of the debut album from three years earlier. We get a BIG fuzzy guitar solo here, backed by some powerhouse drums. The tempo and tone immediately drops on the next track, the gentle, sleepy Long Road Home. The producer on this album was Todd Rundgren, notable for mixing different sounds between songs and finding a song's intrinsic poppy melody. He manages to do that on this album and we get an offering that is certainly not all-out rock (not that any of the group's albums were), and one that vacillates between rockers and lush ballads like the lovely, introspective and haunting Old Hat. This is quality stuff.  I am reminded as I listen that none of the four Fanny albums I have covered were full-on rock albums. Not at all. 

Drummer Alice de Buhr contributes (apparently) drunken vocals to Solid Gold. It has a loose, bluesy feel to it in some respects but in others it is clumsy and a tad embarrassing. Half and half. I'll leave my glass half empty I think. Next up is a plaintive, piano and vocal ballad in Is It Really You? It isn't one that particularly sticks in the mind though, despite its nice subtle bass and New Orleans-style jazzy finish.

All Mine is a solid number with an appealing bass and piano intro and a smoky, Christine McVie-style vocal. I love that organ break mid-song, followed by some killer saxophone. It is one of the album's best and most mature songs. Summer Song is a typical piece of tuneful Fanny rock. There was often a bit of a country feel to much of their material and, while this is a rock song first and foremost, those breezy country harmonies are present. A bone fide country vibe can be found on the lively homespun pleasure of the honky-tonk piano-backed Polecat Blues.

Beside Myself is another big ballad with Fleetwood Mac airs. Similarly laid-back is Regular Guy. Fanny never did live up the hard-rocking image some tried to portray, did they? Four albums certainly proved that. They were far more subtle than many presumed. Whoever created that image can't have listened to their albums, particularly this one. The chunky, grinding I Need You Need Me brings back the rock, however, but it still retains Fanny's intrinsic ear for a melody.

Feelings sees an immediate return to peaceful balladry before the group's original line-up signed off with a corker of a fuzzy wah-wah enhanced rocker in I'm Satisfied. 

Fanny gave the world four good albums, none of which were listened to be too many people, which was a shame. They were a fine group.

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