BILL ORCUTT - MUSIC FOR FOUR GUITARS

(Available on Palilalia Records or from Forced Exposure )

Thirty years ago Orcutt formed the free improvisational noise project Harry Pussy, unleashing a barrage of atonal skronk (famously played on his 4-string guitar) throughout the ‘90s. Taking a decade off following the band’s demise in 1997, Orcutt has since released dozens of albums and singles, occasionally collaborating with Terrastock performers Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and Loren Mazzacane Connors. Another Terrastock connection: former Charalambides guitarist Tom Carter penned the liner notes. His latest release changes directions into a meditative mood, exchanging his four strings for four guitars to produce 14 short pieces of Steve Reichian minimalism.

     Opener ‘A different view’ announces this new approach via a subtly building cascade of guitars seemingly playing different tunes in different rooms. But there’s a mesmerizing monotony to the repetition as walls of sound ricochet around the room. ‘Two things closer together’ is more cacophonous, a battle between electric strings pummeling your ears with occasionally discordant tones. By the time you reach ‘At a distance’, his guitars are carrying on a musical conversation - a call and response echo that intrigues as it confounds. Surely he’s overdubbing? How can anyone play four guitars at once? But the seamless integration of one track bleeding into the next does hint that he recorded everything as one long experimental track and sliced them into segments, each of which received its own title.

     Instrumental compositions can be called whatever the composer chooses, often having nothing to do with the track itself. With titles like ‘Or from behind’, ‘From below’, ‘In profile’, and ‘Out of the corner of the eye’, there is a temptation to allow the listener to re-sequence the tracks such that the titles form the semblance of a semi-coherent run-on sentence. (Orcutt intentionally only capitalizes the first letter of his song titles, as if they were each starting a new sentence.) It would be very interesting to see how the dynamic of the recording changes if the tracks were sequenced randomly by title or according to the listener’s fancy. Would the same hypnotic pulsing rhythms hold or would the sound sequence variation disrupt Orcutt’s overall intent (assuming he has one!) Another interesting observation is that almost all of the titles reflect visual clues: ‘Seen from above’, ‘On the horizon’, ‘From below’, ‘ Barely visible’, “Or from behind’, ‘In profile’, etc. Perhaps another choice on Orcutt’s part to disorient the listener by mixing senses and creating “visual music’?

     In the event, there’s no denying the hallucinating throb generated by ‘Glimpsed while driving’ and ‘Barely visible’ or that less than halfway through the album you’ve nearly forgotten you’re listening to four guitars simultaneously like some invisible four-man army has slipped into the speakers. It remains to be seen and heard how, or if Orcutt can pull this off onstage, but in the comfort of your own listening space, this is an experience you will enjoy hearing, even if it takes a little time to absorb the concept and free your natural tendency to try and create linear musical tones from occasionally discordant sources. This is musical multi-tasking at its most provocative, challenging, and rewarding.

(Jeff Penczak)

JACKEN ELSWYTH - SIX STATIC SCENES
(CD from Neolithic Recordings available at https://jackenelswyth.bandcamp.com/)

Terrascope has never shied from championing nimble pickers of however many strings they choose to negotiate - Robbie Basho, Jack Rose, Glenn Jones and more recently Toby Hay and Jim Ghedi. Well step into our 100w glow, Jacken Elswyth, with whom you may possibly be familiar as a member of dyed-in-the-wool folkies the Shovel Dance Collective. What separates Elswyth from the herd, though, is that her weapon o’ choice is the oft-maligned (surely not here, though) banjo, an instrument to which she brings a freshness of approach and which prompts the listener to reappraise how they regard that particular string driven thing.

The six scenes of the title are covered over seven cuts, four of which are named in respect of folk and “mountain” exponents of the instrument, and which are invocative and interpretive but not in any real sense imitative.  And therein lies one of the album’s key strengths, as for any art form to survive, let alone thrive, it has to absorb and adapt with enthusiasm and intent. Verily, as Elswyth’s Neolithic Recordings label-chum Alex Neilson puts it in his liner notes, ‘folk music is a mongrel breed. Unreliable. Malleable. Promiscuous’. Bull’s-eye! Take that, ghost of Ewan McColl, you pedantic and joyless old so-and-so.  

‘Scene 1, after Hobart Smith’ is motorik banjo, locked in repetition until an invisible force seems to gently nudge at Jacken’s elbow, releasing the tension. Beneath the plucking of strings a bowing action gives the impression of drone much as other musicians might use a harmonium or a keyboard bass pedal. ‘...Doc Boggs’, too, is an abstract interpretation rather than faithful copy. Although more evidently melodic, the terrific ‘...Dink Roberts’ is not a Dinked copy (by all means groan at this point), and the same may be said of her nod to the great Irish Traveller Margaret Barry, whereas ‘Scene 4b’ is a powerful and at times disconcerting example of Elswyth’s bowing technique. As with the other unnamed scenes, ‘Scene 5’ moves away from inspirational banjo players and towards something more angular and avant-garde -, Elswyth herself citing Zoot Horn Rollo’s playing with the Magic Band. Somewhere the late Captain must be face-palming his trout mask, cursing a missed trick along the way.

Think you know banjo? Think again. Jacken Elswyth, she strums, she sweeps she scores. Now pick this one out of the ‘Net.

Ian Fraser

THE RE-STONED – STORIES OF THE ASTRAL LIZARD VOL. 2

(LP/CD/Digital on Bandcamp, Kozmik Artifactz (LP), Qiasum Music (CD))

In 2018, the great Russian band The Re-Stoned decided to take a break from their heavy riffing, hard rocking sound and released their quiet, other-worldly instrumental psychedelic masterpiece ‘Stories of the Astral Lizard.’  Now, after a four-year-long return to power trio form, the band felt it was about time to return to the same well from which they drew the first Astral Lizard, and gift us all with this second, magnificent volume.

Like its predecessor, the album swirls together elements of super-mellow psychedelia, folk and space rock into a chillout head(phone) trip of the first order.  Re-Stoned main man Ilya Lipkin (also of Terrascope favorite Maat Lander along with members of Vespero), never gets enough credit for being such a brilliant guitarist and writer.  Here he trades in his hard-edged axe work for acoustic guitars, mandolin, and electric guitar with no less jamming but sugar coated with finesse and a laid-back style all its own.  Drummer Evgeniy Tkachev mostly swaps his rock drum kit for a hand-played djembe drum.  Vladimir Kislyakov is solid and steady on bass.

On the track “Astral Realm,” guest Alexander “Maxim” Dobromyslov plays compelling flute alongside Lipkin’s mandolin and some spacy synth effects.  The result is like a spellbinding psychedelic Dreamtime trip in a parched desert under a blazing sun with the astral lizard from Alexander (Arzamas) Zhelonkin’s wonderful cover art for company, crisscrossing your path and walking over your sandals.  (Ilya Lipkin was inspired by the lizard imagery after seeing a painting of it Zhelonkin had made, hanging in his home, which would inform the covers of both Lizard albums.)

The Re-Stoned took the essence of the first album, and rather than create something exactly like it, explores adjacent lands, worlds and galaxies in space, both inner and outer.  They also more than doubled Vol. 1’s size, clocking in at a spread-out 1 hour and 34 minutes.  The eleven tracks are stretched out, almost trance-inducing astral folk.

On “Fluorescent Essence,” guest Dobromyslov returns, this time playing clarinet next to Ilya Lipkin’s acoustic strumming.  On the bandcamp page, Lipkin comes right out and asks what we think of hearing clarinet on a psychedelic Re-Stoned record?  Pretty darned amazing, in this writer’s humble opinion.  Dobromyslov’s understated playing is like that of a hypnotic snake charmer in a stoner Klezmer band during a mystical Kabbalah rite.

The album is available in a transparent yellow vinyl double LP on Kozmik Artifactz and CD from Qiasum Music.  And in case you’re wondering, The Re-Stoned is all about peace and love, as opposed to the madness and horrors their country’s leaders have wrought.  ‘Astral Lizard Vol. 2’ is an extremely calming, soothing, ethereal, spiritual journey you can really immerse yourself in.  Mind duly blown.

(Mark Feingold)

ANGEL OLSEN – BIG TIME

(LP/CD/Cassette/Digital on Jagjaguwar Records)

In the run-up to Angel Olsen entering the recording studio to make ‘Big Time,’ she underwent a heavy cathartic period of highs, lows and tragedies almost on a Roy Orbisonian scale.  She had a reckoning with her own queerness; experienced her first such romance and breakup; came out to her parents; her father died three days later of illness, and her mother died a few months later of another illness; and she found lasting love with someone new.

So it’s not surprising the album is incredibly raw with still-smarting emotion.  And as you would expect, there’s confusion in her message, too, but not as much as you might think.  Most of the songs are wide-eyed and full of the wisdom that comes from both ecstatic love and loss.

Starting off with breakup song “All the Good Times,” Olsen doesn’t mince words:  “If you’ve ever been open, there’s no way of knowing/With the way that knowing you has been/Was it always so broken?”  She’d actually written it around 2017, but it slotted in perfectly with the themes of the album, so she included it here.  Musically, it starts out with a Nashville sound with pedal steel background, then suddenly in the middle veers across the state to a Dusty in Memphis sensibility (though the album was recorded in Topanga Canyon, California).

Second song and title track “Big Time” is the big, big, big highlight of the album.  Has there ever been a song that so perfectly captured the sheer, simple joy of just bumming around with the person with whom you’re madly in love?  The song is recorded in the Cosmic American Music tradition, with glorious pedal steel and Olsen’s reverbed voice and harmonies.  The upbeat melody is perfect as are the lyrics and Olsen’s touching vocals (words and music by Olsen with new flame Beau Thibodeaux).  She nails cosmic country cowgirl so perfectly it’s hard to imagine it’s not her regular style.  When she occasionally breaks into a brief falsetto, it’ll make your heart go all a-flutter.  “Big Time” the song is way up there in my fave songs of the year.

It gets complicated from there.

All those devastating events that fed into the making of the album begin pouring out of Olsen.  Relationship problems are at the heart of both “Dream Thing” and “Ghost On.”  The achingly beautiful “All the Flowers” tells of her search to be alive and be loved while trying to understand who she truly is:  “I’ve been spending too much time/searching in vain to find/the only reason…/Be alive, to try/To be somebody/To be alive/And with another.”  The searing “Right Now” might be about that difficult conversation with her parents and/or their passing.

“This is How it Works” is an anguished cry for help during who knows which of all the things that were going on with her at the time.  Dripping with heartbreak, Olsen’s voice is so fraught with emotion you can almost see the tears in her eyes as she sings “I know you can’t talk long/But I’m barely hanging on” and “Tell me something good/Pull me out from what I’m in.”  The pedal steel accompaniment wrings every last drop of pathos and pain.

Closer “Chasing the Sun” is sort of a companion piece to the fun-loving title track “Big Time.”  The lyrics are just as bubbly about having a ball while accomplishing little with your new love:  “I can’t seem to get anything done/With someone like you around/Everyone’s wondered where I’ve gone/Having too much fun.”   But oddly, the tune and arrangement forgo the joy and have much of the same quality of the second half of the album, with a last-one-left-in-the-bar piano and torch song singing.”  Maybe it’s a statement of what a confusing time it’s been for Olsen, with pain wrapped up with joy.

I have a slight bone to pick with ace producer Jonathan Wilson’s approach.  Wilson also produces all the Father John Misty albums, which are very grandiose, with lots of strings and horns.  His production is spotless as usual, but especially in the second half, ‘Big Time’ loads up on the arrangements and can sound at times more like a Father John Misty album than an Angel Olsen album (and she hasn’t shied away from big productions in the past).  But her superlative songwriting and vocals certainly put her stamp on the record.  The album’s at its best, considering some of the stark material, on the songs with simpler instrumentation including pedal steel, much of it courtesy of the great Spencer Cullum, not the big orchestra.

Angel Olsen went into the studio to begin recording ‘Big Time’ only three weeks after her mother’s funeral.  She had a chance to put it off, but we’re all the beneficiaries of the fact that she didn’t, and hung it all out there while she was still in the moment.  Would any of us have done the same?

(Mark Feingold)

GURANFOE – 2022-04-14 HOPE & ANCHOR, LONDON, ENGLAND

(bandcamp)

Norwich’s Guranfoe releases studio albums, but puts out many more live recordings.  They’re slightly difficult to categorise.  Often lumped in with prog (but they don’t have a keyboard player), they have a psych side as well.  We loved their ‘Live at the Boathouse Studio,’ which we reviewed last year.  What’s interesting between that set and this one is that in ‘Live at the Boathouse Studio,’ augmented by Irene Katsenelson on viola, Malachi Siner-Cheverst on cello, and Rob Milne on flute and saxophone, they played a full selection of uplifting, shapeshifting pastoral instrumental music, with prog overtones.

But on this night, different venue, the same four fellows – James Burnes and Ollie Snell on guitars, Robin Breeze on bass, and Joe Burns, sans the guests noted above – have not come to make you feel pleasant.  They come to rock your socks off.  It’s like it’s a completely different band, but it’s not.

Man, are these guys tight, and they’re on fire.  Again, I can see where some might point to prog, but about the only marker in that realm is the oft-complex time signatures and the precision they bring to it.  But really this is some serious rocking going on.  The incendiary twin guitar attack of Burnes and Snell almost carries the whole performance on their backs.  If you love great electric guitar playing, tune in and turn on (I’ll leave the dropping out up to you).

Burnes and Snell – I’ll just say it, they’re awesome.  They usually take turns burning up their fretboards, but occasionally they harmonize together in a Thin Lizzy/Wishbone Ash bit.  While those moments are even better than the alternating solos, Guranfoe reaches plenty of brilliant heights without that level of synchronization.

Like so many great jazz and jam bands, the tracks appear to be a mix of planned beginnings and ends with a jam-filled middle of the doughnut.  All four of them have a heightened sense of telepathy and know exactly where the freight train is headed.  Barely pausing to catch their breath between the six primary tracks – or not pausing at all - Guranfoe just lets rip, essentially one continuous performance, plus an encore (and they hardly even leave the stage before the encore).  And they scarecely seem to have broken a sweat in the process.

I’ll try not to make too many band comparisons, because really Guranfoe is their own thing, but one other live band that comes to mind is White Denim, and that’s not quite the same thing.  One thing I like that they do with these self-released live gigs is they videotape them and publish those, too.  Here, I’ll save you the trouble:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hoajvefCpE&list=PL7gwJ5q9gtbqdp0t-vPqPf09kRzPabNIM&index=4.

In a just world, Guranfoe would finish their set to the rapturous cheers of thousands instead of just the fine denizens of the small London venue.  But sometimes those are the greatest gigs in the world, and we’ll do our part to spread the word.

(Mark Feingold)

ALISON O’DONNELL - HARK THE VOICE THAT SINGS FOR ALL

(Available on Talking Elephant)

The former Mellow Candle vocalist explores her Irish heritage via these “new songs in the ancient tradition.” Several songs are Caoineadhs (laments) for sorrow or loss, often resulting from forced emigration to America or a lover’s betrayal. Accompaniment includes bodhrán (a native Celtic drum), fiddle, harp, banjo, and flute, all in subtle service to O’Donnell’s brooding tales delivered in her crystalline, emotional voice. Her tribute to Irish hero, Padraig Pearse is particularly powerful.

     ‘I Wish We’d Sailed On The Jeanie Johnston’ is a rousing tale of the only coffin ship to escape death enroute to America, featuring O’Donnell’s lilting, e.g., “riddledy, diddledy, die-do.” ‘Shout Our Redemption To The Silvery Pines’ champions the power of redemption and forgiveness, and ‘Scarlet Berries For The Mistle Thrush’ is a haunting tale of love and loss sung in the sean-nós (unaccompanied) “old style.”

     O’Donnell has consistently enthralled us with each new release, whether it be with her numerous collaborations with United Bible Studies, Firefay, The Owl Service et.al., or her career-spanning retrospective (Spread Your Sailing Angels Over Me) which is an excellent starting point for newcomers. Her latest may be the closest to her heart, and will certainly warm yours.

Jeff Penczak

BRIDGET ST. JOHN - FROM THERE / TO HERE: UK/US RECORDINGS (1974-1982)

(Available on Cherry Red)

Following on from their 4CD box set compiling Bridget’s albums on John Peel’s Dandelion label along with various BBC recordings, Cherry Red offers this 50-track, 3CD box set of her subsequent albums on Chrysalis (1974’s Jumblequeen - always one word as Bridget explains, “It’s always been one word. It’s my word: ‘Jumblequeen.’ Other people have made it into two words”) and The Road Goes On Forever (1995’s Take The 5ifth) along with a mouth-watering selection of unreleased recordings following her move to New York City in the mid-‘70s from Bridget’s recently-discovered tape archive! As a special added bonus, Bridget’s 24-page liner notes walk us through the background of most of the recording sessions and her life in the New York music scene.

     Following the demise of Dandelion in 1973, Bridget released a one-off single for MCA comprising Leonard Cohen’s ‘Passing Thru’ c/w her original ‘The Road Was Lonely On My Own’. Produced by Michael Chapman, it unfortunately “vanished before it appeared.” An interview with Elton John’s Rocket Records went well (“I was told that Elton liked my work”), but the label opted to sign Kiki Dee instead (“Labels did not sign multiple female artists.”) The following year, Steeleye Span bassist Rick Kemp introduced Bridget to their manager Jo Lustig who negotiated a deal with Chrysalis. The resulting Jumblequeen was well received but failed to meet the label’s expectations and Bridget once again found herself without a label.

Jumblequeen

     Staff producer Leo Lyons assembled a crack band that included drummer Michael Giles from King Crimson and Ten Years After keyboardist Chick Churchill. Bridget brought in guitarist Stefan Grossman and Beverley Martyn (who sings harmonies on ‘Curious & Wooly’ and whose ex-husband John figures in Bridget’s story once she moves to New York). Grossman’s bottleneck slide dominates opener ‘Sparrowpit’, a loose and jolly little toetapper (and Bridget’s home at the time - we’ll return here later in our review) propelled by Giles’s rolling drum fills. Bridget’s 6- and 12-string guitars weave around her fragile vocals on the introspective ‘Song For The Waterden Widow’ which resembles some of the more delicate tracks on her Dandelion releases. Churchill’s string arrangements (cello, viola, violin) are sublime.

     The tearful lullaby ‘I Don’t Know If I Can Take It’ reveals her love of Cohen’s swaying melodies and ‘Some Kind of Beautiful’ shuffles along with a reggae groove and a rather unexpected fiery guitar solo from future Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden! ‘Last Goodnight’ reminds me of Judy Collins’s ‘My Father’ and is just as heart-wrenching. (It also reunites Bridget with Nigel Beresford, who contributed several songs to her Dandelion albums.) Bridget and Beverley are songbirds in angelic flight as their voices harmonise and soar heavenward on ‘Curious & Wooly’ and the title track once again dabbles in Bridget’s autobiographical experiences that permeated her Dandelion albums (“The songs were a reflection, as always, of my experiences.”) The lone cover (curiously enough in light of the Rocket Records frustration) is Elton’s ‘Sweet Painted Lady’ (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road being a constant in her 8-track player), but I feel that Bridget’s slower arrangement is a tad too serious and loses its familiar vaudevillian swagger. Perhaps that’s the intention, but the original is so indelibly ingrained in my psyche that Bridget’s rendition feels uncomfortable.

     Of the six bonus tracks, three are reprised from the Hux 2006 reissue: the warbly, dreamy ‘3db Australia’ (a radio station) is a long-distance conversation full of sadness and yearning - perfect for late-night come downs; ‘Bumper To Bumper’ features a wonderful guitar solo and harmony vocal from Steve Hayton; and ‘Grow’ is a fun test of breath control! The three previously unreleased tracks feature the fragile, wistful acoustic folk of ‘Nancy Alice (Later)’ (a reference to a “later” version of her original home recording in Sparrowpit) and a somnambulistic iceberg trawl through Dylan’s ‘Just Like A Woman’ (curiously rewriting the lyric to be self-reflective: “I take just like a woman…”). The track is identified as the “Battered Ornaments Version”, a reference to frequent Cream lyricist Pete Brown’s band, Battered Ornaments. Bridget explains: “I was hanging out with Pete at his place, he had a home studio and some of the guys were there so we did a recording. It was a home recording so there’s nothing officially documented.” The final track on Disk 1 is the inconsequential 48-second ‘Little Song (Take 2)’, which seems like a rehearsal for a never-completed song. ‘Take 2’?

     As Bridget assessed her options of continuing in the biz without a record label to release her songs, she moved house to New York City around 1977. With the nascent punk scene continuing to flower around her she continued to write and began performing in the folk clubs (opening for John Martyn at Kenny’s Castaways from 17-19 June) and recording demos, supporting herself by waitressing (“I was not very good at it”) and eventually cooking in Kenny’s kitchen! (The booklet includes numerous period gig ads for several of Bridget’s more prestigious performances, including Central Park and Carnegie Hall!) Nearly 20 years later, she selected 17 of her demo recordings for The Road Goes On Forever’s John Tobler to release as Take The 5ifth (1995).

Take The 5ifth

     Perhaps appropriately beginning with ‘Castaway’(!), the demos are presented in crystal clear quality, Bridget in fine vocal form throughout and supported by various backing bands. You’d never know the occasionally frustrating circumstances under which they were recorded. From ‘Castaway’ and (the tribute to her touring band) ‘Manhattan Madhatters’’s romantic sax backing to the funky soulful ‘Chamille’, it’s certainly a more varied collection as befits its recording history, but it allows the listener to appreciate Bridget’s expanding influences and enjoy her “stretching” outside of a pure “folk” style, introducing more electric elements. But she hasn’t left her folk roots behind as demonstrated by the lovely Cohensque melody permeating ‘Make-Me-Whole’ and the intimate ‘Maybe If I Write A Letter.’ ‘I Need It Sometimes’ offers a strident gospel backing and ‘Best I Can’ and ‘Crazy Heart’ are some of her best pop confections. A pleasant ‘Catch A Falling Star’ was once touted as a single for Virgin but they went with Anthony More’s version instead, and ‘Song For John’ is may be the most heartwrenching tribute to Lennon you’ll ever hear. It’s one of her most brilliant moments, full of autobiographical touches that lay her emotions bare. It’s tissue time, folks!

     A true cornucopia of sounds and styles, it’s criminal that the album didn’t find a larger audience, as it’s the equivalent of (and often better) than many of the female singer-songwriter albums of the period. A true treasure right up there with the best of Carole King, Janis Ian, Laura Nyro, Buffy Sainte-Marie, et.al.

The New York Sessions

     Disk three is the real collector’s treasure: alongside her previously released first three demos recorded in New York (the soft and breezy ‘Moody’ - with its strong Joni Mitchell influence - and ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’) and ‘Come Up And See Me Sometime’ featuring a great Jim Mullen (Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express, Average White Band) solo, Bridget has hand-picked 14 previously unreleased tracks that were never considered for Take the 5ifth. “They were my choice, I had many to choose from.”

     Two new recordings of Jumblequeen’s ‘Curious & Wooly’ are presented, a punchier “New York Version” and a more calypso-styled arrangement (the “Right Track Version”) produced at Right Track Recording Studio by Steve Burgh who played guitar and produced Steve Forbert’s debut Alive On Arrival around the same time. “I rewrote the music entirely. When I got to NYC I felt the song differently.” There’s also a glistening, floating “simpler version” of Take The 5ifth’s ‘Castaway’ (“it’s more laid back and has no sax so it’s gentler. It’s closer to how I performed it live at that time”) and a feisty “rock” version of Jumblequeen’s ‘Some Kind Of Beautiful’ with a storming guitar solo from Jimmy Rippetoe (Television, Mick Jagger solo).

     A sublime piano solo/backing by Denny Sawan features throughout the “Roxy Recorders Version” of ‘I Need It Sometimes’ that omits the gospel backing. I actually prefer this to the version on Take The 5ifth (which featured studio vet Richard Tee from her husband Gordon Edwards’s band Stuff on piano). There are six selections from this Roxy Recorders demo session from August 1981, all featuring excellent accompaniment from Sawan, and all are among the most exciting offerings on this sublime collection of unreleased demos that illustrate Bridget’s thought processes as she works through various arrangements trying to find the perfect format for each song.

     Elsewhere, I prefer the softer, more intimate “Roxy Recorders Version” of ‘Feel My Love’ to the click track, drum-filled version with the electric guitar solo selected for Take The 5ifth. A looser, snappier version with piano to the fore (Tee again?) of Take The 5ifth’s ‘Flying For Now’ (“Stuff Version” performed with Stuff) is another example of Bridget’s uncanny ability to change arrangements as the situation dictates with equally exciting results. And ‘Help Him Through It’ sounds like she listened to a lot of Patti Smith during her time in New York! Perhaps best of all, there are references in Bridget’s liners to demos that are not included, so more buried treasures lie in wait for a future archaeological dig!

     Aside from minor quibbles (purists may be frustrated by the lack of specific recording and personnel details which are only alluded to in her liners), this is a welcome set of Bridget’s middle period - a perfect stepping stone from the Dandelion years to her 2006 performance at Terrastock 6, collaborations with Michael Chapman on several albums, touring Spain and Japan (four times!), releasing her first album in 50 years (Live at Betsey Trotwood), and celebrating her 75^th birthday with a two-hour set that went down a house afire! Bridget ends her liners on a positive note which is worth repeating here: “I adapt as I need to, and I intend to continue saying ‘Yes’ to things I want to do – write more, perform more, record more.” We’ll be waiting patiently to hear what you come up with!

Jeff Penczak