Within a year of
Moby Grape sadly crashing to a halt again after the release of the ill-fated reunion album
20 Granite Creek,
Bob Mosley (who sang, played guitar, and wrote songs with the group) released his first solo album, and if 1972's
Bob Mosley isn't a masterpiece on the order of
Moby Grape's peerless debut album, it showed that
Mosley's share of the talent that produced that great record was still in working order.
Bob Mosley is a decidedly harder-rocking album than much of the
Grape catalog, with
Mosley and
Ed Black loading up the songs with plenty of tough guitar work, but the melodies show the same blend of grace and power that marked his best work, and
Mosley's pipes are in strong form here, with his
blues-based vocals sounding potent and impassioned throughout (he also gets a great assist from
the Memphis Horns, who add their punchy brass accents to several tracks).
"Joker" and
"Where Do the Birds Go" are fiery rockers,
"Let the Music Play" is the sort of anthem
Grape needed in the wake of their debut, and
"Thanks" and
"Gone Fishin'" are
country-rock workouts that fit
Mosley like a glove.
Bob Mosley turned out to be
Mosley's first and last solo album (except for an unreleased 1974 set that didn't see release until 1999), but if he fell victim to the same bad luck that haunted
Moby Grape, he at least left behind a record that proved he had the talent to make it as a solo act if he'd been dealt a better hand. ~ Mark Deming
