Retrospective: Free: Tons Of Sobs: The Album (1968)
Created | Updated Jan 30, 2006
Free’s debut album, Tons of Sobs is markedly different from any other record the band subsequently released. On first listening, it seems an overwhelmingly raw, rock album: When the acoustic, Over The Green Hills (part 1) is shot to pieces after about a minute as Worry crashes in, Led Zeppelin style, you wonder what you’ve let yourself in for.
But, getting further into the album, the blues roots are never far away with tracks such as Walk In My Shadow, Wild Indian Woman and The Hunter. Listeners are even treated to a cover of the classic Goin’ Down Slow, in full. And though at times Kossoff’s guitar gets a little rambly, it has to be said that others have not played the song in a particularly restrained manner either.Moonshine, on the other hand, is a completely different piece of work, and feels almost out of place with the mood of the other material. Written by Paul Kossoff and Paul Rodgers it has an eerie, lonely quality to it, and creates such a vivid image it is difficult to understand why it was sandwiched on the B side between The Hunter and Sweet Tooth, when it could have been much better placed on the other side.
Paul Rodgers gives an inkling of his potential to be a writer of cheery and memorable riffs, with Sweet Tooth, and the beginnings of the Fraser/Rodgers writing collaboration is blessed with the arrival of I’m a Mover.
Simple, yet brilliant.
All this, neatly rounded off with the acoustic bookends that are Over The Green Hills Part 1 and 2. Tons Of Sobs is available on CD: IMCD62
