This might be the worst-sounding masterpiece I’ve ever heard--but it's still a masterpiece. Producer Joe Boyd, who certainly enters the Hall of Fame for his impeccable musical taste as a producer and A&R man (Incredible String Band, Fairport, Chris MacGregor, John Martin, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Toots & the Maytals), listened a little too hard to the musicians' fears of “sounding like a rock ‘n’ roll band” and produced a record that sounds as if they’re playing under several layers of quilts—though the remastered and expanded version is a little better.
The result, track by track, is absolutely earth-shattering: the jubilation of Sandy’s Come All Ye (introducing the band’s personnel and writing them into myth at the same time), the spooky fanged terror of Reynardine (based on AL Lloyd’s re-write of a traditional song, about which Swarbrick said “it wasn’t us—it was Sandy’s ability to tell a story, and us rambling around in the background”), the raging fiddle medley The Lark in the Morning (in which Thompson’s skirling electric and Simon Nicol’s thumping acoustic guitars kick Swarbrick into the highest gear). Most intense moment of all is probably Tam Lin, an ancient (14th century) Scottish border ballad of demonic kidnapping and rescue, and the ancient bloody balladry of Matty powered by the Mattacks/Hutchings rhythm section, who had the good taste to rip off the fantastic descending pentatonic riff from Martin Carthy’s version of The Famous Flower of Serving Men (itself possibly the greatest folk-song performance I’ve ever heard).
[h/t to Dharmonia for putting the right riff with the right ballad.]
1 comment:
Great entry. Just for the record, the "Famous Flower of Serving Men" riff was used on Matty Groves, not Tam Lin (not that it matters.)
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