Pentangle – Travelling Song

The favourite new album release at Fruit Tree Records this week is the Lavinia Blackwall ‘The Making’ record and so, in honour of its acid-folk splendour, here are another half dozen cherries of a similar ilk picked from that late 60s/early 70s period that Lavinia draws so much inspiration from. Top of the pile are Pentangle whose magnificent melange of influences created music that was a fusion of jazz and folk with a worldly wise outlook that transcends the era in which it is forever connected.

Fotheringay – Too Much Of Nothing

Sandy Denny’s first post-Fairport Convention project was this band, Fotheringay, who were only around long enough to release one album in their lifetime. Consequently, film footage is scarce which makes the excellent colour quality of this clip even more special. Undoubtedly it was Sandy who was the star presence in this combo and personally, I would pick her ‘Nothing More’ composition about former Fairport colleague Richard Thompson as the real standout track but this version of a Bob Dylan tune, taken from his at the time unreleased ‘Basement Tapes’, is a fine take with Trevor Lucas on lead vocals.

The Incredible String Band – Painting Box

The Incredibles were the most psychedelic of all the acid-folk brigade, both in terms of their multi-coloured sartorial elegance, the far-out nature of their approach and the apparent full embracing of hippie ideals and lifestyle. Their music too could stretch and weave way beyond all normal boundaries of song structure, occasionally flying close to the brink of collapse but always somehow magically holding together to form something unique, confusing and often beautiful. This is one of their lovelier melodic moments, performed with Julie Felix on her TV show, of a track that featured on the 1967 LP ‘The Five Thousand Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion’.

Renaissance – Can You Understand?

If the Incredibles represented the more psych end of the acid-folk spectrum then Renaissance leaned towards an exploration of the classical elements in their sound, especially as they were in the first few years of their existence. The original line-up featured two former members of the Yardbirds, Jim McCarty and Keith Relf alongside Keith’s sister Jane on vocals. However, for Renaissance, it would only be after wholesale personnel changes, including the introduction of Annie Haslem on vocals as featured here, that would push them to wider recognition and chart success, most notably on ‘Northern Lights’, a massive hit later in the decade.

Magnet – Willow’s Song

Perhaps the defining song of the whole acid-folk movement of the era, this was played and recorded by a band who were not really a band at all in the truest sense, more like a group of musicians assembled for the purpose of recording the soundtrack to the 1973 dark cult classic film ‘The Wicker Man’. Starring Edward Woodward and Britt Ekland, it is remembered for its use in an erotic scene where Ekland’s character Willow sings to Woodward’s Neil Howie seductively through the wall of an adjacent room. The music for the film was actually arranged, scored and partly composed by Paul Giovanni.

Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

Richard & Linda’s 1974 album of the same name is one of the essential releases in UK folk-rock of any period, not just the early seventies. The live TV clip here is admittedly not a patch on the original studio version but film footage of the duo is not exactly in plentiful supply and therefore is offered up as the features are about showing performances, where possible, as much as hearing them. The song is about as upbeat as the pair would ever get whilst still retaining some of Richard’s trademark doom, even if it is merely in the sense that this night on the tiles is bound to have a messy ending. My first introduction to their work came in 1999 when John Peel played this song on the radio, continuing to say something along the lines of “anybody interested in music should listen to Richard Thompson”. Well, yes indeed!