Various Artists. Electric Eden.

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Blabber’n’Smoke received a copy of Rob Young’s exhaustive history of, for want of a better term, British alternative folk and folk rock, Electric Eden last Christmas. As a long time listener of the likes of the extended Fairport Convention family tree, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Pentangle at al we devoured the book wondering at the vastness of it all and greedily devouring via Spotify and YouTube numerous artists we’d either forgotten about or had never heard in the first place. Young uses the early chapters to explore the late 19th and early 20th Century roots of the folk revival in some detail to advance his thesis that this ties in with a uniquely British innate desire to return to and commune with a bucolic faerie fuelled past. He then tops off the book with a look at the likes of Kate Bush and Julian Cope in the eighties but the meat of the book is in the blossoming of a new type of folk, fuelled by the beatnik, hippie and rock movements of the 50s to the 70s. As a true companion to the book this album would have been required to be a box set of some sumptuous proportions, sadly it is not so however Young has compiled a fine primer which manages to balance familiar and obscure relics of the highwater years from 1966-1979.
With the two discs subtitled “Acoustic Eden” and “Electric Albion” there’s a rough division between those bands and artists who upheld more traditional sounds and those who plugged in and with drums, bass and a rock’n’roll heart. A mite misleading as some of the electric songs are much more traditional than the acoustic ones with Comus (acoustic) scary as hell and Shirley Collins & The Albion Country Band (electric) sounding as if they were conjured from a Thomas Hardy novel. That quibble aside the 36 songs here capture the spirit of adventure and daring that allowed such songs as Tim Hart and Maddy Prior’s False Knight On The Road to rub shoulder to shoulder with prog and Krautrock on the late John Peel’s radio shows. While the likes of Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson, Pentangle, John Martyn and Steeleye Span are well represented here the real thrill is in hearing names that have been thrown up as influences by the freak folk crowd but are rarely represented on compilations. Thus Bill Fay, Peter Bellamy, Meic Stevens, COB, Shelagh McDonald, Mick Softley, Trees and even our very own Archie Fisher (with a wonderful rendition of Reynardine complete with sitar) are offered a moment in the sun with around a dozen others. Even David Bowie gets in here with Black Country Rock. Nicely packaged with liner notes by Young it’s an engaging trip down a mystic country lane for those who remember those times and a great place to start for anyone wanting to dig deep into what the likes of Devandra Banhart is on about.

Tracklist

CD1
ACOUSTIC EDEN
1. Peter Bellamy – ‘Oak, Ash and Thorn’
2. Traffic – ‘John Barleycorn Must Die’
3. Bert Jansch – ‘The Waggoner’s Lad’
4. Fairport Convention – ‘Stranger to Himself’
5. Archie Fisher – ‘Reynardine’
6. Bread, Love and Dreams – ‘Brother John’
7. Bill Fay – ‘Garden Song’
8. Water Into Wine Band – ‘Stranger in the World’
9. Tudor Lodge – ‘Willow Tree’
10. Comus – ‘Diana’
11. Meic Stevens – ‘Yorric’
12. Magic Carpet – ‘The Dream’
13. Sweeney’s Men – ‘The Pipe on the Hob’
14. Tim Hart & Maddy Prior – ‘False Knight on the Road’
15. Dr Strangely Strange – ‘Dark-Haired Lady’
16. Albion Country Band – ‘I Was a Young Man’
17. COB – ‘Music of the Ages’
18. Roger Nicholson – ‘The Carman’s Whistle’
19. Bridget St John – ‘Fly High’
20. John Martyn – ‘She Moves Through the Fair’
CD 2
ELECTRIC ALBION
1. Richard Thompson – ‘Roll over Vaughn Williams’
2. Steeleye Span – ‘The Lark in the Morning’
3. Unicorn – ‘Country Road’
4. Fairport Convention – ‘A Sailor’s Life’
5. Trees – ‘Glasgerion’
6. Fotheringay – ‘Gypsy Davey’
7. David Bowie – ‘Black Country Rock’
8. John Martyn – ‘Glistening Glyndebourne’
9. Mike Cooper – ‘Paper and Smoke’
10. Shelagh McDonald – ‘Mirage’
11. Spirogyra – ‘Disraeli’s Problem’
12. Mick Softley – ‘Time Machine’
13. Shirley Collins & The Albion Country Band – ‘Murder of Maria Marten’
14. Pentangle – ‘Jack Orion’
15. Incredible String Band – ‘Painted Chariot’
16. Nick Drake – ‘Voices’

Hungrytown. Any Forgotten Thing.

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When an album plops into the Blabber office with a press release noting it was recorded in rural America by a husband and wife team we generally fire up the search engine and head to backwoods Appalachia for reference points. Hungrytown however forsake old time country and down-home hoots. The reference points here are the folk duos who populated the sixties from Simon and Garfunkel (OK, two guys but you get the drift) to Richard and Mimi Farina and all points between. Back then a whiff of old time Americana music might occasionally peek through but the primary influences were English (or Scots or Irish) folk song delivered in a bright collegiate style, precious, unsullied.
Hungrytown, Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson, capture that innocent era perfectly on this, their second album. Hall has a crystal clear voice while Anderson provides accompaniment and harmonies that have a naïve, innocent vibe especially when he adds glockenspiel to his guitar, mandolin, banjo and assorted other instruments. At times there is just too much sweetness and light and although they never descend into Puff the Magic Dragon land a song like Rolling Train with it’s opening lines “You’ll never stop the wind, never stop the rain/By standing in the path of a hurricane” is just a little bit too twee. Although they teeter on this edge on a few other songs happily the majority are rescued by some excellent harmonies and on the opening song “Year Without Summer” they turn in a real showstopper. A historical tale based on the long winter that followed the eruption of a volcano in 1815, Hall sings like Judy Henske on a song that could have been delivered on her Farewell Aldebaran album. The measured delivery even has some touches of early Pentangle about it and the addition of harmony vocals from Laura Molinelli adds a fine icy grandeur. The dreamlike Calliope with its circus waltz tune and Sally Lazy, a distant cousin to Sally Go Round The Roses could sit easily on a Hollywood psychedelic soundtrack featuring the likes of Tuesday Weld running through a meadow in slow motion.
Hungrytown will be touring the UK in may with a performance in Penicuik included. Dates on the website

Year Without Summer