David Bowie - Hunky Dory

Released - December 1971

Genre - Psychedelic Folk

Producer - Ken Scott & David Bowie

Selected Personnel - David Bowie (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Saxophone); Mick Ronson (Guitar/Mellotron); Rick Wakeman (Piano); Trevor Bolder (Bass/Trumpet); Mick Woodmansey (Drums)

Standout Track - Life On Mars?

After the fey psychedelic folk of Space Oddity and the unhinged hard rock of The Man Who Sold The World, David Bowie was restless. He had experimented with two extremes, and neither had really managed to capture what he was capable of. What The Man Who Sold The World had given him, significantly, was the knowledge that he had a talented group of musicians around him who he knew could work with whatever material he gave them and make it into something musically compelling and fresh and different. Joining guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer Woody Woodmansey for the new album was bassist Trevor Bolder, replacing the outgoing Tony Visconti and thus completing the lineup of the band that would soon be known as the Spiders From Mars. Taking over Visconti's role as producer was Ken Scott, who would similarly come to be a crucial figure in Bowie's world over the next few years. (Visconti himself at this time had given up on Bowie, choosing to champion the far more commercially promising work of Marc Bolan and T. Rex, though he would return to the Bowie stable in a few years to become one of his key collaborators even to this day). But this time, Bowie knew not to rely exclusively on the talents of his sidemen - there were sections of The Man Who Sold The World where he himself was barely noticeable behind Ronson's firebrand solos, and this time the focus would shift squarely back onto Bowie as writer and performer, or, as he tellingly credits himself on the album sleeve, "actor." So it was that Bowie withdrew into the domestic retreat of the new home he shared with his wife Angie to write material for Hunky Dory, which is still heralded by many Bowie fans as one of his crowning achievements.

Although the core lineup behind Hunky Dory is the same as on that earlier album, this couldn't be more different to The Man Who Sold The World. Bowie had been teaching himself piano and composed most of the music on the instrument (although several of the final piano parts on the finished album were performed by future Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman), and this in itself shifts the focus back onto the stylised mannerisms and psychedelic music hall stylings of his earlier work in the late 60s. The epic instrumental jams of "The Width Of A Circle," for instance, are gone, replaced by short, simple piano-based songs. "Kooks," in particular, sounds like a relic from his more juvenile Antony Newley-inspired work, but this time around Bowie has had time to develop his compositional skills, his voice, his command of the art, and the finished product isn't one of embarrassing childishness but of gleeful nostalgia. The other key change is optimism - the paranoid psychosis of The Man Who Sold The World is gone, replaced mostly by a joie-de-vivre and an innocent vivaciousness that laid the groundworks for his jubilant pleas of "let the children boogie" a year later. This was music whose first intention was to be fun rather than to shock or impress. Bowie himself was in finer voice than ever before at this point, with the moments of trembling and bleating from his earlier work long forgotten. The vocal theatrics and comedy drawl of "Eight Line Poem" show one extreme of his mastery of theatrical performance, while the impassioned cries to heaven of "Life On Mars?" rank among Bowie's finest vocal performances of his career.

The rest of the band handle the material brilliantly, and are carefully kept in a supporting role rather than being allowed to dominate as they were previously. Ronson's guitar is generally tastefully relegated to the sidelines, with the occasional searing dominant line, with "Life On Mars?" again being the best example, while "Queen Bitch" is the only song to be really reliant on Ronson's riffing. Far more significant is Ronson's contribution to the orchestral arrangements, with the lush strings lending a sense of grandeur and scale to proceedings throughout that complements Bowie's sense of overt theatricality perfectly. Then there's the songs themselves - I know multiple people who have at first assumed that Hunky Dory is some sort of best of compilation given the sheer number of Bowie classics on offer. "Changes" is one of his very best pop songs, and also the first time Bowie confronted head-on the idea of shifting one's own identity in order to create a response in an audience, an idea he would soon take on literally in adopting the Ziggy Stardust persona. "Oh! You Pretty Things" is another classic, showcasing once again what would become a Bowie trademark in its jubilant, ascendant chorus, its inherent catchiness drawing attention away from the prophetic, apocalyptic nature of the lyrics, alluding to the coming of the homo superior. "Life On Mars?" has become so adored it's barely worth talking about quite what a phenomenal song it is, one of the most powerful and stirring songs in the Bowie canon. But even beyond the immortal classics, this album is full of incredible material. "Kooks," an unabashedly silly tribute to Bowie's newborn son Zowie (now Duncan Jones, the director of Moon), is childish but infectiously joyous, while "Andy Warhol" is a hazily psychedelic classic paying tribute to the man who had recently become one of Bowie's obsessions and idols after a visit to New York where he discovered the Velvet Underground. Warhol himself, when he eventually met Bowie and heard it, hated the song. "Queen Bitch" does tribute to Lou Reed himself, and is the first Bowie song to anticipate the more aggressive, stomping glam rock style of the Ziggy years to follow, and album closer "The Bewlay Brothers" is perhaps the only true note of pessimism on the album. It's a haunting, chilling, frightened song about mental illness, inspired by Bowie's own stepbrother Terry who at this time was still in the Cane Hill mental institution for schizophrenia, and is one of the most personal songs Bowie ever wrote.

Hunky Dory is generally one of the first Bowie albums newcomers encounter along with The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, and rightly so - it contains some of his best-loved classics and was also the first true mission statement for the David Bowie that would come to be familiar to the world - this wasn't the man of a year before who was overly reliant on his backing band to finish off his scraps of ideas, this was a fully-formed, alien, theatrical performer in total command of his image and his music and his sense of what he wanted to achieve. Sadly, despite Bowie's sudden spurt of proactive effort to again be seen as a radical new artist in his own right rather than just the leader of a band, Hunky Dory didn't achieve much at a time and was eclipsed by the far greater success of his rival when T. Rex released the first definitive glam rock album, Electric Warrior. Whether the global success to follow for Bowie was in some way indebted to Marc Bolan's work in the field of glam rock is up for debate, but Bowie certainly approached glam rock with a far greater sense of artistry, theatricality and originality than Bolan managed and it wouldn't be long before the crown would have to be passed over, at which point the timeless songs of Hunky Dory finally achieved the recognition they deserved.

Track Listing:

All songs written by David Bowie, except where noted.

1. Changes

2. Oh! You Pretty Things

3. Eight Line Poem

4. Life On Mars?

5. Kooks

6. Quicksand

7. Fill Your Heart (Biff Rose & Paul Williams)

8. Andy Warhol

9. Song For Bob Dylan

10. Queen Bitch

11. The Bewlay Brothers

Cat Stevens - Teaser And The Firecat

Released - October 1971

Genre - Folk

Producer - Paul Samwell-Smith

Selected Personnel - Cat Stevens (Vocals/Guitar/Keyboards); Alun Davies (Guitar); Larry Steele (Bass/Congas); Gerry Conway (Drums); Harvey Burns (Drums); Rick Wakeman (Piano); Del Newman (String Arrangements)

Standout Track - How Can I Tell You?

After 1970's Tea For The Tillerman, Cat Stevens could do no wrong. At one stage, his shifting of focus onto the territory of the singer-songwriter and the folk musician rather than the novelty pop singer looked like a risk, but now, with two successful folk albums behind him, he no longer had a point to prove. He had firmly acquitted himself as perhaps the foremost folk musician in the UK at the time. The big commercial payoff of the artistic gamble is a position countless artists have found themselves in over the years, and it's a position that frequently engenders either laziness or iconoclasm. David Bowie is a good example - after achieving suerstardom in the early 70s with his work as alter-ego Ziggy Stardust, his response to the acclaim was to kill his alter-ego and gradually indulge in funk and disco and morph into a purveyor of "plastic soul," totally reinventing himself and running the risk of alienating his hard-won audience all over again. Later still, after the global success of his Let's Dance album in 1983, he went the other way and resorted to lazily trying to cater to his audience, resulting in the musical abortion that is Tonight, one of the most tepid and lacklustre albums of all time. In the early 70s, Cat Stevens was at his commercial peak and bears the distinction of being one of few artists to become neither lazy nor iconoclastic in response to their success. His work post-Tea For The Tillerman showed no signs of artistic reinvention or a rethinking of approach (1973's Foreigner would be a rather bold change of gear, but that was about it in terms of reinvention). On the contrary, his subsequent work continued to mine the same vein of sincere, expertly crafted and heartfelt folk music, often drawing from the same themes of spiritual yearning or childhood innocence. But nor did he become lazy in retreading the same ground - while Teaser And The Firecat never surprises a listener already familiar with Stevens's work, it also never bores him and finds way to continue delivering songs that are new and compelling and fresh and as emotional and uplifting as ever.

A significant factor in Stevens's continuing retreading of the same basic templates and forms is probably the comfort he felt working with a familiar group of people. Teaser And The Firecat sees him bouncing off more or less the same group of collaborators as on the last two albums, notably guitarist Alun Davies, who continues to lend a crucial energy and dynamism to the arrangements, along with producer Paul Samwell-Smith and drummer Harvey Burns. A significant addition, if only for one song, is Rick Wakeman, soon to be the keyboardist for Yes, who provides the urgent, bubbling piano runs on the children's schoolyard hymn of "Morning Has Broken." Things kick off with the simple "The Wind," a lovely brief intro composed of Stevens's mellow tones and simple guitar-picking before segueing into "Ruby Love," a brilliantly energetic song that's enlivened by the Mediterranean-style guitar playing by either Stevens or Davies, with Hispanic frills and decorations, making it one of a long line of Stevens's Spanish-inflected pop songs, along with the likes of the following year's "O Caritas." "If I Laugh" is a beautifully melancholy folk ballad in the vein of "Where Do The Children Play," but this time far more achingly personal and regretful than that earlier, more socio-political work. It's about the pain and the heartache of trying to get over a loved one that was never meant to be, and would take the award for the most heart-rending song on the album were it not for the presence of "How Can I Tell You?", easily one of the most sincerely felt and tragically emotional songs in Stevens's discography - the lyrics are simple almost to the point of naivety, but it's so heartfelt and so honest, and the melody so beautiful, that it quickly wormed its way into my affections to become one of my favourite songs, and a song I went back to again and again throughout uni after every doomed romance or unrequited longing.

The second half of the album is populated more by uptempo pop songs than melancholy ballads, with the frenetic guitar strumming of "Bitterblue", complete with Stevens's empassioned cries, being a highlight, along with the simple beauty of "Moonshadow," another song that mines Stevens's keen ear for simple, childlike sing-along melodies that manage to be utterly catchy and memorable without ever seeming trite or contrived (despite his own tales of having written the song while dancing across the rocks on a beach in the moonlight coming across as ever so slightly affected). The closing number is the rousing "Peace Train," a gospel-tinged rabble-rousing cry for peace and understanding that utilises a full choir of backing singers to full effect in order to finish the album on a heartwarming high-point. Ultimately, it's probably "Peace Train" that sums up the ebullient of this album the best - it's perhaps lyrically naive, but it's so committed and so expertly arranged that it conveys its message with no trace of cynicism or doubt. The message of this album is ultimately far more hopeful than the fears and doubts of Tea For The Tillerman, and it's impossible to listen to without it putting a smile on your face. For the ability to make an album so feelgood and uplifting means I'll overlook no end of retreading old ground. It may not be innovative, but it's one of his finest moments.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Cat Stevens except where noted.

1. The Wind

2. Ruby Love

3. If I Laugh

4. Changes IV

5. How Can I Tell You?

6. Tuesday's Dead

7. Morning Has Broken (Traditional, arranged by Cat Stevens; words by Eleanor Farjeon)

8. Bitterblue

9. Moonshadow

10. Peace Train 

Carole King - Tapestry

Released - February 1971

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Lou Adler

Selected Personnel - Carole King (Vocals/Piano/Keyboards); Curtis Amy (Flute/Saxophone); Steve Barzyk (Drums); David Campbell (Cello/Viola); Danny Kortchmar (Guitar/Conga); Russ Kunkel (Drums); Charles Larkey (Bass); Joni Mitchell (Backing Vocals); James Taylor (Guitar)

Standout Track - It's Too Late

I came to this relatively recently, only earlier this year I think, which is strange considering its astounding popularity and its tangential links to a lot of the music that's already firmly lodged in my consciousness. It's an album that's achieved musical history thanks to being the longest-running charting album by a female solo artist, and Carole King's links to the West Coast folk scene populated by the likes of Joni Mitchell (who performs backing vocals on Tapestry) means I really ought to have become aware of her sooner than I did. Nonetheless, it was only earlier this year that Emily was showing me her latest vinyl acquisitions (Emily insists on listening to everything on vinyl, whereas I'm a semi-keen collector of records on vinyl purely as decorative objects because I don't own a record player). Among them was Tapestry, something I had only vaguely heard of before due to its legacy, but knew very little about. Only on her insistence that it was an album she connected with personally (the cover image of a woman sat at home with her cat and her soft furnishings struck a chord, I think) did I go away and learn more about King and listen to the record itself which, while hardly particularly innovative or adventurous, is one of the very best early examples of easy listening and fun, heartwarming pop music to come from the vaguely credible source of the singer-songwriter scene rather than from the bigger, more commercial pop machine record companies that were churning out pop music that was altogether more tedious and anodyne.

Carole King had been an important invisible presence on the music scene for many years by the time she finally achieved breakthrough success as an artist in her own right with Tapestry. She had started in the 50s by recording demos with none other than Paul Simon, who had been a schoolfriend in New York, before striking up a songwriting partnership with her husband Gerry Goffin. Throughout the 60s, Goffin and King would be the creative force behind some of the decade's biggest hits, most notably "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" by the Shirelles in 1960 and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin in 1967. They also contributed a number of songs to Dusty Springfield's seminal Dusty In Memphis in 1969, but by the time that album was released their marriage and songwriting partnership had dissolved, and King had moved to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, where she struck up friendships with the local folk movement, with the likes of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. (There's theories that King is one of the "Ladies of the Canyon" that Joni Mitchell sings about on the title track of her third album). Taylor encouraged her to perform more of her own material, and the result was the tepidly-received Writer in 1970. Undeterred by her debut album's lack of success or critical notice, she finessed the formula for Tapestry and soon ended up breaking records all over the world, some of which remain unbroken today.

As I said, Tapestry isn't the sort of album that will astound and amaze anybody well-versed in folk music of the early 70s. There's none of the astonishing personal insight or storytelling of Mitchell here, none of her unusual arrangements or vocal trills, nor is there any of the elegant, rootsy folk rock of Neil Young. This is essentially undemanding pop music, but filtered through the mind of somebody far more honest and sincere and talented than the minds that created most other commercial pop music throughout the 60s. What makes this album really fascinating, in fact, is its status as a sort of marriage between two quite disparate musical styles, standing on the brink of the transition from one to the other. King's songwriting is still very much in the vein of 1960s pop, with these songs being fairly simple (albeit catchy and beautiul) verse-chorus-verse constructions with undemanding lyrics of heartache and longing, a long way from the aforementioned complexity of the rest of the West Coast folk scene. But it's also very much in line with the folk movement in its simple, tasteful, stripped down acoustic arrangements. It's perhaps in this marriage of two different musical worlds that it succeeded in capturing a mass audience that her contemporaries in Laurel Canyon had largely failed to really grasp at this point. It's certainly a world away from the sound of the hits Goffin and King had crafted for the likes of the Shirelles, even though a couple of those early hits are dusted off and reinvented here. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" is given an earthy, honest makeover built around King's voice and piano and comes off far more emotionally affecting and profound than the original rendition, with its crowded and busy production and arrangements. "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," meanwhile, lacks the bombast and vocal power of Aretha Franklin's original, and is perhaps less able of grabbing you by the throat and demanding your attention, but King's softer, even weaker voice, renders it far more vulnerable and trembling than the original manages. The lack of technical prowess or power in King's voice, in fact, can be a huge virtue on some of these songs. It's never weak enough to be actively bad, but it's simplicity and plainness suits these simple, homespun tunes beautifully and was praised at the time of the album's release for opening up the singer-songwriter genre for artists who perhaps lacked the technical precision of some of their contemporaries, but more than made up for it with their compositions or sheer heart.

King is also one of the earliest successful American folk singer-songwriters to use the piano as their main instrument rather than guitar, and to build the music around it, in a similarly bold and unusual move to Elton John in the UK. The guitars of Danny Kortchmar and James Taylor are largely relegated to the background except for the occasional attention-grabbing lick as on the rollicking opening track "I Feel The Earth Move," or the insistent riff of the country-tinged rockabilly of "Smackwater Jack." But the majority of the standout tracks aren't the more upbeat pop songs but the tender ballads, most notably the heartfelt yearning of "So Far Away," or the album's big hit, the melancholy regret of "It's Too Late," a beautifully weary piece of resignation to the passing of time and to missed opportunities. King's voice, again, is unadorned, unrefined and simple and renders these songs in all their purity and beauty. It may not shock or surprise the keen music-lover, and in places it does sound more like a throwback to straightforward 1960s songwriting techniques rather than the musical advances that surrounded it, but it also contains some of the most affecting and downright memorable tunes of the era, and deserves its longstanding success. Of course, creating something that became such a worldwide global smash would go on to be an albatross around King's neck, and she was doomed to never again create anything that garnered the critical or commercial acclaim of this early work. But when you've created one of the great masterworks of easy listening, that's hardly something worth complaining about. I'm sure Carole King herself isn't too upset about it.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Carole King except where noted.

1. I Feel The Earth Move

2. So Far Away

3. It's Too Late (Lyrics by Toni Stern)

4. Home Again

5. Beautiful

6. Way Over Yonder

7. You've Got A Friend

8. Where You Lead

9. Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (Gerry Goffin & Carole King)

10. Smackwater Jack (Gerry Goffin & Carole King)

11. Tapestry

12. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (Gerry Goffin; Carole King & Jerry Wexler)

Wishbone Ash - Wishbone Ash

Released - December 1970

Genre - Hard Rock

Producer - Derek Lawrence

Selected Personnel - Andy Powell (Guitar/Vocals); Ted Turner (Guitar/Vocals); Martin Turner (Bass/Vocals); Steve Upton (Drums)

Standout Track - Phoenix

It's remarkable how utterly Wishbone Ash have been forgotten given not only how great they were (or are if you're devoted enough to still be listening to their new material, which I must say has largely passed me by) but also how pioneering and innovative they were. By the end of the 1980s, bands like Thin Lizzy and particularly heavy metal bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden had made the concept of the twin lead guitar fairly commonplace, but in 1970 it was practically unheard of, except perhaps for the dual guitar work of Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds in the 60s. Then along came Andy Powell and Ted Turner, with their alternately elegant and incendiary twin guitar parts and went some way towards reinventing rock music ever so slightly. Today, most people wouldn't even recognise the name. I first came into contact with Wishbone Ash in 2008, when Jack (who I've mentioned here a few times already) told me they would be playing at the Waterfront in Norwich and I should come given that I'd been getting into prog. At the time, I had never been to a live gig before. Today, music gigs are probably the leisure activity I spend the most money on. I took the plunge and started to listen to Wishbone Ash and, while these days I probably wouldn't think of them as true "prog," they certainly gelled perfectly with my existing sensibilities. There was the virtuosic talent and the complex extended jams of the great prog bands, plus the gutsy, earthy simplicity of classic hard rock like Free and Bad Company. They are perhaps the greatest band to have ever changed the face of music and then go completely unremembered for it.

They're also a band very much innocent of the occasional trajectory whereby it takes a band a few albums to really capitalise on their potential. From this debut album, it's already clear that this band was a force to be reckoned with, and it showcases them at their very best. The album came about after the band was recommended to MCA Records by Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore after an impromptu jam with Andy Powell before a gig at which Wishbone Ash were the support act. Powell and Ted Turner are, without a shadow of a doubt, the focus of attention throughout, although their vocal harmonies leave a lot to be desired - though they're far more vaultingly ambitious and impressively complex than the likes of Free, there's none of the confident swaggering vocals of Paul Rodgers here, and both the lyrics and the vocal performances themselves fail to really hit home. Thankfully, it's rare on this album that you're really paying attention to the vocals, and it's not long before another searing guitar solo or twin melody will take the lead again and scour away any bad memories of Powell and Turner attempting to sing. The style is largely in the territory of traditional blues and hard rock of the time, with the barnstorming opener "Blind Eye" being a fairly typical rock and roll song elevated by the twin guitar work. "Errors Of My Way" starts off as a plodding blues number but by the end has developed into a fiery hard rock jam that stands out as a highlight.

The album's second side, however, is by far the material that steals the show, and also the place where the band flexes its muscles a little more. It kicks off with "Handy," a lengthy jam that's built entirely around Martin Turner's (no relation to lead guitarist Ted) bass, which starts with a nimble solo then leads the band through a lengthy, elegant progression into a frenetic, rockabilly crescendo. It's hugely untypical of Wishbone Ash, given how rare it was for the bass to take centrestage, but stands out hugely because of its anomalous nature, and the ultimate payoff is more than worth the running time. Then there's "Phoenix," which is easily the best song the band ever composed, and one that's very close to my heart. Again, it's a slow-burner, starting as a sort of grandiose ballad before turning on its head midway through and delivering some of the most incredible firebrand guitar solos and bass breakdowns in the history of hard rock before storming to its conclusion. It's still one of my all-time favourite hard rock songs, and also perhaps the only hard rock song to have ever moved me to tears. Back when I reviewed Cat Stevens's Mona Bone Jakon, I mentioned the passing of a friend that inadvertently led me to discover Cat Stevens and Antony and the Johnsons. That friend passed away two days before I saw Wishbone Ash live at the Waterfront, the first concert I ever attended, and for those two days her Facebook wall was taken up with tributes from friends and family, many of which made reference to "the phoenix rising again." Two days later I watched Wishbone Ash close by playing "Phoenix" and have rarely been so moved by a concert, inappropriately enough given the hard rocking qualities of the song itself.

Although Wishbone Ash contains a handful of the finest moments the band would ever record, it's not their masterwork. Both "Lady Whisky" and "Queen Of Torture" are fairly standard by-the-numbers efforts, and do little to really hold the attention. The template of brilliance they established on songs like "Handy" and "Phoenix" would soon be one they set across the board and it wouldn't be long before they unleashed an album of solid hard rock brilliance from start to finish. Sadly, it wouldn't be immediate and they followed Wishbone Ash up with a fairly tepid album of acoustic ballads and instrumental jams. But, though it wasn't perfect and it would take them a little time to achieve perfection, Wishbone Ash is still one of the most astonishing debuts from a rock band and leaves the listener in no doubt that these guys had a huge amount of talent and something truly phenomenal was just around the corner.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Andy Powell; Ted Turner; Martin Turner & Steve Upton.

1. Blind Eye

2. Lady Whisky

3. Errors Of My Way

4. Queen Of Torture

5. Handy

6. Phoenix

Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day

Released - 1970

Genre - Psychedelic Folk

Producer - Joe Boyd

Selected Personnel - Vashti Bunyan (Vocals/Guitar); Christopher Sykes (Piano/Organ); Robin Williamson (Fiddle/Irish Harp/Whistle); Dave Swarbrick (Fiddle/Mandolin); Simon Nicol (Banjo); Mike Crowther (Guitar); John James (Dulcitone)

Standout Track - Diamond Day

I should probably go about formally introducing some of the supporting characters in this blog, because there are certain figures who are going to crop up with semi-regularity. Other than my immediate family, all of whom have always had a huge influence on my musical tastes and upbringing, there are three principal figures in my life who have had significant and repeated input into my musical education. The first is Jack, the guy I've mentioned a lot who stoked my love of classic rock and prog at university. The second is Emily, who set up a cultural exchange with me that's been going for several years and got me to appreciate folk music with a greater passion than in my younger days. The third is Frith, who was the friend who inadvertently opened up Peter Sarstedt and CocoRosie to me. Vashti Bunyan is one of Frith's. At some point in 2007 or 2008, during my first year at uni, one of my habitual visits to Frith's halls happened to have for its soundtrack a few songs of Vashti's, which at the time I paid little attention to, dismissing it as "typical Frith music," ethereal and airy folk that I was only listening to with half an ear. At the time, I was still an unabashed fan of pop rock, and it wasn't until perhaps a year later that my musical interests had steered me towards more artistically credible material that I suddenly remembered Vashti and decided to make it my mission to track her work down and see if I could learn to appreciate it now that my tastes had matured somewhat. I was rewarded with one of the finest folk musicians the world has ever seen.

There's a very elusive quality that some music manages to achieve, and that's timelessness. By that, I don't necessarily mean music that doesn't age - listening to Just Another Diamond Day certainly feels like establishing a connection with a long-forgotten past, but my point is that this music doesn't really even sound like it belongs to any specific time, other than the fact that it's definitely not the present. Even in 1970, this would surely have had the same strange, antiquated, mythic quality, the sense that this was music not from a recording studio but from the earth or the air or the sea itself. It's a remarkable, intangible essence dancing somewhere between Vashti's breathy, starry-eyed vocals and the simple, elegant acoustic arrangements or the simple, hummable melodies - this is music from the dawn of time, deeply uncynical, heart-warmingly sincere and honest and plain. I find it difficult to really put my finger on what makes this record feel so effortlessly natural and ethereal, like something that's been conjured rather than composed, but it's one of the most beautiful folk relics of all time, and one that's rightly gone on to inspire a huge amount of the contemporary new folk scene, with the likes of Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom taking inspiration from her legacy.

It took time for Vashti to discover this critical adoration and immortality, though - in 1970, this was practically ignored. Vashti had dabbled in singing and songwriting since the mid-60s before (in a move that comes as not even remotely surprising in its charming antiquity for anybody familiar with her music) relocating to the Hebrides by horse and cart to write and record Just Another Diamond Day. There was no other place this album could possibly have been written than on a remote island in a horse-drawn cart, it's music a million miles away from the real world and all the better for it. These songs might not be hugely relevant or deeply personal, but they rap into a kind of mythic, folkloric sensibility that doesn't need aching personal insight or political commentary to strike a chord in the listener. There are songs about animals, about travel, about weather and nature, all enlivened by Vashti's stunningly beautiful voice and simple arrangements for acoustic guitars, fiddles and whistles. The most beautiful is the stunning "Diamond Day," still one of the greatest feel-good songs to listen to on a sunny day, its simple whistle-led melody making it a classic even to this day (even if that is largely due to its use in an advert). "Timothy Grub" is an adorably naive and childish song about the simple lives led by a group of insects, while "Jog Along Bess" treads similar ground, joyfully painting a picture of a simple rustic life told through the stories of the animals surrounding that particular life. The recorder melody of "Rainbow River," a beautifully simple description of a dream landscape in the country, is achingly beautiful, and it's perhaps that song more than any other that sums up this album's sunny disposition - scenes of idyllic pastoral beauty rendered simply, plainly, in their essence, conjuring up the sense of a woman totally at home in the natural world and conveying her adoration for it. "Trawlerman's Song" is a real highlight too, Vashti and her simple guitar strumming telling the story of a sailor returning home to his family.

It's an album that it's very easy to be cynical about - Vashti Bunyan was clearly either ignorant of the socio-political landscape around her, or simply uninterested in it, and she also has little interest in writing songs about personal heartbreak. She's also uninterested in being musically adventurous or daring, and all these qualities were a long way from the musical mainstream of the time, defined as it was chiefly by the political ire of the singer-songwriter movement and the pioneering virtuosity of prog. One can easily look at Just Another Diamond Day and say it's out of touch, old-fashioned, or naive, and all of these would be true. But it's impossible to listen to this album without being utterly charmed by its beauty and its simplicity, and Vashti's voice is so breathy, so intimate and charming that it's never anything other than a pleasure to spend half an hour in her company. Sadly, though it received some critical notice at the time, the paying public at the time were reluctant to agree and, largely due to its sounding so ancient and so far removed from the modern world, it was all but ignored on release, prompting Vashti to decide music wasn't for her and to retire, robbing the world of what could have gone on to be one of the greatest and most important talents in folk music.

Thankfully, though, the story of Vashti's withdrawal from the music scene due to the lacklustre response to her simple, heartfelt folk music has a happy ending, even if it took a long time to get to it. Over the ensuing thirty years, Just Another Diamond Day gradually developed a cult following among folk music fanatics, while Vashti went about living her life and raising her children in complete ignorance of her growing standing as an "elder statesman" of folk music to younger imitators. At the turn of the millennium, when artists such as Devendra Banhart began praising her influence, among other new folk pioneers, it encouraged her to emerge from the musical wilderness and begin working again, collaborating with others including Banhart himself, and even releasing her own second album, Lookaftering, in 2005, thirty-five years after her debut. Her commercial stock exploded even to the point of having "Diamond Day" featured in adverts, and suddenly the rustic beauty of her early work was finally given the attention and the praise it had always deserved.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Vashti Bunyan except where noted.

1. Diamond Day

2. Glow Worms

3. Lily Pond

4. Timothy Grub

5. Where I Like To Stand (Vashti Bunyan & John James)

6. Swallow Song

7. Window Over The Bay (Vashti Bunyan & Robert Lewis)

8. Rose Hip November

9. Come Wind Come Rain

10. Hebridean Sun (Vashti Bunyan & Robert Lewis)

11. Rainbow River

12. Trawlerman's Song (Vashti Bunyan & Robert Lewis)

13. Jog Along Bess

14. Iris's Song For Us (Vashti Bunyan; Wally Dix & Iris MacFarlane)

Supertramp - Supertramp

Released - July 1970

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Supertramp

Selected Personnel - Rick Davies (Organ/Piano/Keyboards/Harmonica/Vocals); Roger Hodgson (Vocals/Bass/Guitar/Cello); Richard Palmer-James (Guitar/Vocals); Robert Millar (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Try Again

Every now and again these days, usually when I haven't listened to them for a little while, I sometimes wonder whether my constant assertions that Supertramp are The Greatest Band Of All Time have become more an affectation than a genuine opinion, much like my deliberately self-imposed decision to have never heard Hotel California purely for the look on people's faces. After all, these days I know more about the musical landscape that surrounded Supertramp at the time than I did when I first discovered them, so am more aware of the music that shaped and influenced them, and sometimes it occurs to me that perhaps my initial adoration of the band has been tempered a little by the increased knowledge that they borrowed a lot from their peers rather than being true visionaries themselves. But then I go back and listen to them again and realise that, yes, Supertramp will always be the band that means more to me than any other, and that I enjoy more than any other. True, my greater awareness of the early 70s scene means I now know they're not the most pioneering or visionary prog rock band of all time, but in terms of the enormous significance their music has in my life, combined with their unparalleled ability to apply progressive styles and methods to catchy pop songs makes them stand above all other bands I've listened to. I first discovered the band when I was about 14 watching Steve Coogan's unfairly maligned comedy The Parole Officer, which opens with the doorbell chimes of Supertramp's "Dreamer," a song I fell in love with at first listen. At the time I was immersed in the music of ELO and 10cc, and my stepdad, who to this day is a big Supertramp fan, commented that I'd like Supertramp as they were "the thinking man's ELO." So commenced a five or six-year obsession with the band which, though it has lessened in recent years mainly due to my having now heard literally everything the band ever produced several times over, and their refusal to make anything new, came to be one of the most compelling musical odysseys I ever undertook, on a level only with my later Tom Waits obsession.

I came to their self-titled debut relatively late, after the likes of Crime Of The Century and Breakfast In America had wormed their way into my brain and lodged there. At uni, my friend Jack, he who first stoked the fire of my journey into prog, also facilitated my discovery of more obscure Supertramp material from outside of their more popular work, and it wasn't long before I ended up at the Supertramp album. At this stage, the band was in an awkward preliminary incarnation of itself, a world away from the pop-rock, Wurlitzer and sax-driven behemoths they would become. The band initially centred on pianist and keyboard-player Rick Davies (who, despite the legions of Hodgson fans who deride much of Davies's work, particularly with the post-Hodgson Supertramp, has always been my favourite of the two creative hubs of the band). Financed by an eccentric Dutch millionaire with an immense faith in Davies's ability, the pianist recruited Hodgson on vocals and bass and future King Crimson cohort Richard Palmer-James on guitar, plus Robert Millar on drums. This was in fact the only Supertramp album in their entire career where all the songs stemmed from collaborative songwriting rather than being composed of an equal split of Hodgson and Davies's own solo compositions, and it's pleasantly different for it. Davies was behind the chord progressions and structures of the songs, while Hodsgson composed the melodies, leaving Palmer-James to write the lyrics, a role he would again be asked to fulfil for Crimson a few years later.

The mood is fairly typical of late 60s and early 70s prog, although there's a tension at the heart of things that lends a greater sense of dynamism and originality to proceedings than some of the material produced around the same time by bands like Yes. While Hodgson was very much in favour of going down the route of psychedelia and prog, Davies was, and continues to be, a bluesman at heart, his jazzy chord progressions and keyboard solos keeping things anchored in a rootsy earthiness missing from some of the more ethereal prog of the same time. Remarkably, this stylistic tension doesn't result in an album that pulls in two different directions but, no doubt down to the collaborative songwriting, one that manages to draw influence from two very different genres and actually pull them both off masterfully. From the ethereal, floaty intro of "Surely" we have the gutsy blues rock of "It's A Long Road" which develops into a classic early 70s blues jam over Davies's jazzy organ. "Maybe I'm A Beggar" starts meditative and bleak then bursts into one of the most explosive instrumental jams of the band's career, punctuated by Palmer-James's searing guitar lines. The songs here are built much more around full-band jams and instrumental sections than they ever would be again, as the solo songwriting that would soon dominate would result in tighter, more focused pop songs rather than the more sprawling rock of this early record. The best example is the album's big standout, "Try Again," one of the band's finest prog epics, with its explosive descending bass line and elegant shifting between slow, pondering and menace and frantic volition (even with its brief foray into meandering prog nonsense near the climax); though "Nothing To Show" (featuring Davies's first vocal performance) is great fun too, featuring one of the finest organ solos in prog.

The standouts aren't just the more loose-structured hard rock jams, though - "And I Am Not Like Other Birds Of Prey" is a lovely piece of lazy, pastoral psychedelia and "Home Again," consisting only of Hodgson's plaintive vocal over his acoustic guitar, is one of the most simple and beautiful songs of the band's career, all too quickly over, a brief island of solitude and comfort in the midst of the more hard-edged rock of the majority of the album. Hodgson's vocals are, in some ways, easier on the ear than they would come to be. Here, there's none of the straining into falsetto of their later work, his naturally high voice is allowed to stay within its natural register and it sounds simpler, cleaner, if perhaps less impassioned. Hodgson himself would soon upgrade himself to guitarist and co-keyboard player, and the band would naturally evolve to be principally built around keyboards rather than guitars, as Hodgson's interest in them was far greater than in the much-overused electric guitar. Davies would also soon get an upgrade as composing his own material would give him the confidence to take on the role of co-lead vocalist, throwing his bluesy, growling baritone voice into the mix alongside Hodgson's reedy tenor.

In many ways, it was Supertramp's increasing focus on keyboards, and their pioneering use of the Wurliter in particular, that really made them stand out and begin to win a mass audience, and at this stage the one complaint you can make of them is that they weren't making much effort to sound different from what was going on around them at the time. Though the blend of Hodgson's psychedelic leanings and Davies's blues roots created a pleasing energy in the music itself, by and large it sounded a lot like most other psychedelic and prog rock of the early 70s. Its lack of true breakout potential caused it to commercially ignored, despite a strong critical response, and that Dutch millionaire soon withdrew his support for the band, resulting in the departure of both Palmer-James and Millar. Having discovered a creative partnership that created some truly great material, Davies and Hodgson would forge on to create a new incarnation of the band which, while good, would be similarly unsuccessful. It wasn't until Supertramp Version 3.0 that success finally reared its head. As such, their two early albums are lost treasures that warrant hunting down, and Supertramp is the best of the two, showcasing a more acoustic, pastoral and rustic version of the band than would ever exist again. It's also the Supertramp album you don't need to like Supertramp in order to enjoy, so even those hardcore prog fans who balk at their later pop sensibilities and sax solos can find a huge amount to enjoy here.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Roger Hodgson; Rick Davies & Richard Palmer-James

1. Surely

2. It's A Long Road

3. Aubade/And I Am Not Like Other Birds Of Prey

4. Words Unspoken

5. Maybe I'm A Beggar

6. Home Again

7. Nothing To Show

8. Shadow Song

9. Try Again

10. Surely

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water

Released - January 1970

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Paul Simon; Art Garfunkel & Art Halee

Selected Personnel - Paul Simon (Vocals & Guitar); Art Garfunkel (Vocals); Joe Osborn (Bass); Larry Knechtel (Piano); Peter Drake (Dobro/Pedal Steel); Hal Blaine (Drums)

Standout Track - Keep The Customer Satisfied

To my lasting shame, the first time I had any contact with this classic album's legacy was at the age of, I suppose, about eleven when a cover of the title track was included on the debut album by God-awful manufactured TV pop band Hear'Say, who at the time I was at least moderately interested in considering that I'd invested time in watching them on TV over the last few weeks (to be honest, "Pure And Simple" is still a song that makes me chuckle with its banality, so they're not all bad). The same is true of the Mamas and the Papas' "Monday, Monday," which is a vexing irritation whoever performs it. By the time I finally came to listen to Simon & Garfunkel's final album, however, I was of course familiar with the original recording of the title track, but all of the rest of it was new to me. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" actually does this album something of a disservice - it's a very pretty song, and an undeniable classic down the years, but it's fairly humdrum and by-the-numbers stuff, a simple, plodding pretty melody over the twinkling of a piano, lifted by Garfunkel's soft vocal (put in the spotlight, not quite for the first time, but certainly the most significant time in the duo's career), but it doesn't hint at the jubilant, fresh and innovative spirit that makes this record great.

There's a strange sense of inevitability listening to Bridge Over Troubled Water these days - perhaps the knowledge that this was the duo's final album makes it difficult to listen to it without the pressure of its context, but one does feel listening to it that this is a partnership on its last legs. Simon's songwriting influences and styles have diversified immensely since the relatively straightforward folk of Sounds Of Silence or Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme. The simple, college-graduate acoustic fare of those early albums certainly feel antiquated and quaint by 1970, like a relic from a simpler time, and the gospel, rockabilly, R&B and world influences in evidence on Bridge... imply that some sort of major change was needed in the group's dynamic for them to remain fresh and original. As it turned out, that major change was not only a shifting sensibility in Simon's writing, but also the departure of Garfunkel himself, the figure who had lurked in the shadows of the duo for years, rarely dominating the limelight but always having a subtle and palpable effect on the music itself. Tensions were already beginning to flare up between the duo by this stage, with increasing disagreements over what songs to include, while Garfunkel's increasing focus on his acting career proved a frequent distraction from his commitment to the music. During recording for Bridge..., he was also committed to a role in Mike Nichols' film Catch 22, leaving Simon to effectively manage everything on his own even more than he was usually required to.

Still, without doing discredit to Garfunkel, there's a sense that Simon's increased creative control over the album, and increasing sense of musical adventurousness, were just what was needed. Although the tranquil acoustic beauty of their older work is largely absent (there's nothing remotely as pretty or moving as "Kathy's Song" or "Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall" here), it's replaced by a sense of energy and upbeat optimism reminiscent of their earlier hit "Mrs Robinson," from the soundtrack to The Graduate. The out-and-out classic here is the brilliant "Keep The Customer Satisfied," which ploughs a similar rockabilly style to "Mrs Robinson" but ups the ante with the punch of a horn section, telling a story of homecoming reminiscent of 1966's "Homeward Bound." It's the most gloriously uplifting song they recorded, capturing even better than "Homeward Bound" the euphoria of returning to somewhere familiar. In fact, it's largely the more upbeat folk-rock tracks that really stand out here, with the up-tempo sing-along of "Cecilia" or the gleeful pop of "Baby Driver" standing out as similar highlights.

In terms of the slower, more acoustic numbers, it's not "Bridge Over Troubled Water" that stand out the most, though it is a classic. It's the forlorn epic of "The Boxer" that really sticks with you, Simon's plaintive wordless vocals echoing over the cavernous drumming of Hal Blaine to create a true folk classic. Another highlight is the Pervuian sounds of "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)", a Peruvian song that Simon inadvertently stole, thinking it was a traditional song and not liable to copyright, therefore leaving himself open to legal consequences later on, not for the last time. Despite the odd ownership wrangling that surrounds Simon's acquisition of the song, it's a lovely simple tune that also foreshadows Simon's growing interest in world musical styles which would continue through the reggae of "Mother And Child Reunion" on Paul Simon and the African choral singing of Graceland. While not everything here is a stone-cold classic, the album only really has one major misfire in the perfunctory live cover of the Everley Brothers' "Bye Bye Love," which then segues into the beautiful coda of "Song For The Asking."

Bridge Over Troubled Water proved to be Simon & Garfunkel's biggest hit yet, and perhaps could have been the first taste of a bold and innovative new direction for the duo in the future, if it had been a direction that agreed with Art Garfunkel's sensibilities. However, it soon transpired that Garfunkel found his acting career more rewarding than playing second fiddle to Simon's increasing musical eclecticism, and soon took on a role in Nichols' next film, leaving Simon to plough new ground on his own. Garfunkel would eventually return to the music industry to pursue a fairly forgettable solo career, and sporadically the duo would reunite for one-off concerts, but this still effectively remains the full stop of their career. Without Garfunkel, Simon would go on to create music that sounded bolder and newer and more innovative than the duo had ever sounded, but it would always lack a certain nuance and a certain air of whimsical folksiness that the mind and voice of Art Garfunkel effortlessly contributed to their early work.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Paul Simon except where noted.

1. Bridge Over Troubled Water

2. El Condor Pasa (If I Could) (Daniel Alomia Robles; English lyrics by Paul Simon)

3. Cecilia

4. Keep The Customer Satisfied

5. So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

6. The Boxer

7. Baby Driver

8. The Only Living Boy In New York

9. Why Don't You Write Me?

10. Bye Bye Love (Felice Bryant & Boudleaux Bryant)

11. Song For The Asking

Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

Released - October 1970

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Pink Floyd & Norman Smith

Selected Personnel - Roger Waters (Bass/Guitar/Vocals/Tape Effects); David Gilmour (Guitar/Bass/Drums/Vocals); Richard Wright (Keyboards/Vocals); Nick Mason (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - Atom Heart Mother Suite

By the time I came to Atom Heart Mother, I was already a huge Floyd fan but was beginning to question just how far that affection ran. I loved their run of classic albums in the 70s from The Dark Side Of The Moon through to The Wall, and had decided to delve back into their early work, and was generally uninspired by what I found. More eventually wormed its way into my affections, but much of their other early work I found self-indulgent and tedious. The immediate follow-up to More ranks as the worst thing they ever created, and, for my money, one of the most tediously boring albums ever recorded by any artist. Ummagumma's first half is a live recording of some of their better early psychedelic jams and is fairly enjoyable, but the second half is a place where each of the individual band members showcase their own songwriting talents, ranging from the tedious keyboard cacophonies of Richard Wright's "Sysyphus" through five minutes of Roger Waters impersonating a rat and a Scotsman in "Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict," then via the tuneless guitar noodling of David Gilmour's "The Narrow Way" and culminating in the interminable percussion solo of Nick Mason's "The Grand Vizier's Garden Party." There are few albums I hate more, although its only saving grace is Waters's gorgeous acoustic ballad "Grantchester Meadows." Desperate to work out just when Pink Floyd became genuinely good, I ploughed on and was immediately rewarded with my answer - on Atom Heart Mother, something has changed significantly. The ambition and intelligence and sense of craft is still there, but in the place of the self-indulgence and the tedious jamming is an innate sense of musicality and musical daring that they hadn't yet showcased.

The album stems around the epic title track, one of the most singular things the band ever recorded, and at the time, a piece of music totally unlike anything else that had ever been committed to record. After recording the soundtrack to the film Zabriskie Point, the band had a number of leftover instrumental pieces that they had no clear intention for, and attempted to weave them into one continuous suite. Still feeling it lacked something, they drafted in composer and arranger Ron Geesin and gave him the unenviable task of composing a full orchestral accompaniment to the suite, and the end result is one of the most daring, exciting and unusual things in rock music. Orchestral accompaniment had been used to ornament rock music in the past (Yes would do the same thing the same year with their second album, Time And A Word), but Floyd made the bold decision to create a piece of music that was driven by, and focused on, the orchestral parts, with the band themselves largely relegated to the role of backing musicians except for select sections. The suite opens in an avalanche of bombast with its bold brass fanfares before eventually settling down into a slower groove much later that showcases Richard Wright's jazzy keyboards and, more significantly, the elegant cries of David Gilmour's guitar. In that section, Gilmour lays down his first truly essential, mind-blowing Floyd guitar solo, and perhaps finally acquits himself for the first time as a true force to be reckoned with. From that section there's a fine bit of nonsense singing from a full choir then a bit of typical prog-rock aimless meandering (which, after all the good this piece has done in the build-up, feels earned for the first time ever) before crashing back into the brass fanfares of the opening theme. It's a breathtaking piece of music, astonishing in its ambition and grandeur but actually manages to summon up enough chutzpah to get away with such an overblown statement.

The second side of the album is a much more traditional affair, save for the pointless final track. Sadly, as accomplished as Nick Mason is as a drummer, most opportunities he was ever given to compose something himself end up being sadly disappointing, generally just being lengthy soundscapes and collages of sound effects and percussive noises, which fails to really engage musically to any extent. The whole band is credited with the writing of the tedious "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast," but it was largely a Mason showcase that basically finishes this great album off with a frustrating whimper. But before that the band repeat their approach from Ummagumma, allowing each of the principal songwriters to deliver one song, and the songwriting quality has come on in leaps and bounds in the year since that album. The three songs here can't help but feel like a bit of a letdown after the grandiose excitement of the "Atom Heart Mother Suite," but they demonstrate a kind of summery, laid-back psychedelic cool that makes for excellent easy listening on a sunny day. Roger Waters's "If" is a simple acoustic affair, in the vein of "Grantchester Meadows" but actually lacking some of that song's lazy, sun-drenched atmosphere, though it does begin to showcase Waters's obsession with madness that would come to dominate his writing for the next decade ("If I go insane, please don't put your wires in my brain"). Richard Wright's "Summer '68" is the most exciting of the three, with its bold brass fanfares making it stand apart from the other two more laid-back pieces, though it fails to be as melodically compelling. And David Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun" treads similar ground to "If," but ornaments it with further guitar tricks and a more rousing finale, and rounds things off with a sunny laziness reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" or the Beatles' "Sun King."

Although those three songs on side two are far from being Floyd classics, Atom Heart Mother is the first Floyd album which ("Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" aside) shows a band really firing on all cylinders and delivering something truly essential. The suite is still one of the coolest and most innovative prog epics of all time, and the optimistic, sun-kissed atmosphere that laces this whole album is so infectiously joyous that one can forgive that final misstep. From here, Pink Floyd wouldn't put a foot wrong for the rest of their careers - some of their albums were better than others, but in my opinion, from Atom Heart Mother onwards every single studio album they released was an essential piece of music history, and their very best was still yet to come.

Track Listing:

1. Atom Heart Mother Suite (Roger Waters; David Gilmour; Richard Wright; Nick Mason & Ron Geesin)

2. If (Roger Waters)

3. Summer '68 (Richard Wright)

4. Fat Old Sun (David Gilmour)

5. Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast (Roger Waters; David Gilmour; Richard Wright & Nick Mason)

Neil Young - After The Gold Rush

Released - August 1970

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Neil Young; David Briggs & Kendall Pacios

Selected Personnel - Neil Young (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Harmonica); Danny Whitten (Guitar); Nils Lofgren (Guitar/Piano/Vocals); Jack Nitzche (Piano); Billy Talbot (Bass); Greg Reeves (Bass); Ralph Molina (Drums); Stephen Stills (Vocals)

Standout Track - Southern Man

It's fair to say that, during my most intense period of musical epiphany, from approximately 2008 to 2010, my focus was principally on classic rock and prog. I sought out the whole discographies of classic rock artists, and generally gave, for instance, folk music, only cursory attention to the odd album that stood out to me, despite the fact that a lot of folk music was already very high in my estimations, most notably Joni Mitchell. It wasn't until later that I began to give folk music the same level of attention as I'd given to rock music, the level of attention it deserved, and that was largely down to this album and a girl called Emily. Emily's been a very good friend for many years now, and we've always enjoyed a kind of cultural exchange of music we think the other might appreciate, but she was alarmed back in 2010 to learn that my awareness of Neil Young was virtually nil. Slightly shame-faced, I explained to her that folk music had passed me by ever so slightly, and for my next birthday I received After The Gold Rush on CD with a handwritten instruction to "feed my folk side." Out of my ensuing love of Neil Young stemmed a single-minded desire to find out more about the folk movement, and my affection for Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez, etc etc, all tumbled out from that starting point. After The Gold Rush, then, was a critical tipping point for me in making me realise that folk music was a far bigger and more exciting world than just my limited knowledge of Mitchell or Cat Stevens, even if it never quite captured the obsessional part of my brain that prog managed to tap into.

Neil Young had first risen to prominence alongside Stephen Stills in the mid-60s as one of the principal figures behind Buffalo Springfield, the band that would come to be credited as one of the major bands that created the folk rock movement. After the demise of Buffalo Springfield, Young had released the influential Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere with his backing band Crazy Horse and had shortly afterwards joined the folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, along with his former Buffalo Springfield cohort Stills, former Byrds man David Crosby and Hollies man Graham Nash, all of whom at this time were active figures in the West Coast folk rock scene, with many of them having already collaborated with Mitchell by this point. Young's third solo album, After The Gold Rush, would go on to be the album that catapulted him to stardom, capitalising on the breakout success of the CSNY supergroup partnership. It's perhaps telling that it was also Young's first truly concerted effort to make a truly solo album that wasn't equally defined by a group of backing musicians - although a few tracks were recorded with the Crazy Horse band, Young eventually decided he wanted to have more control over the sound and recorded further tracks with selected members of CSNY and other assorted sidemen (including future Bruce Springsteen sideman Nils Lofgren). The result was an album which, for the first time in Neil Young's career, truly felt like the product of one man's singular vision, and is all the stronger for it.

Coming to this from the point of you of a total Neil Young initiate, the Canadian's vocals were initially a major hurdle for me - there's none of the nuance of Joni Mitchell here, none of the mellow tones of Elton John. Neil Young's voice is one of the most singular voices in music, a high-pitched nasal whine devoid of any real variation or resonance or subtlety. Initially, I found it a real barrier to enjoying the music until I realised that effectively it's exactly the opposite - the plainness and the unadorned nature of that weird voice strips back these songs to their ingredients, to the melodies and the harmonies and the lyrics, so that you're really paying attention here to the workings of the mind of a particular singer-songwriter, rather than being distracted by the complexities and nuances of a performance. Only on the hard-rocking "Southern Man," where Young multi-tracks his own vocal, is the vocal fleshed out enough to lose that weird, alien, reedy quality, but with time and patience it becomes a virtue rather than a distraction or an irritation.

The songs themselves are largely sparsely arranged country-rock, with a couple of exceptions. "Southern Man" is a full-pelt hard rock number spewing vitriol about the treatment of black people in the south (and a song that would later inspire a defensive riposte from Lynyrd Skynyrd extolling the virtues of the south and name-checking Young himself on "Sweet Home Alabama"), while "When You Dance I Can Really Love" is a similar full-band workout. Pretty much all the other songs are stripped down so that the focus is placed squarely on Young's acoustic guitar and piano arrangements, with the occasional harmony vocals rounding out the sound. With such sparseness defining the record's sound, the isolated moments of variation stand out as starkly beautiful, most notably the plaintive horn halfway through "After The Gold Rush," a grimly apocalyptic account of dreamlike imagery that Young initially intended to be the soundtrack for an unmade screenplay of the same name.

Although "Southern Man" sticks out the most simply by loudly and brashly demanding attention, a number of the album's best moments are its simplest and most beautiful. The opener, "Tell Me Why," is a moving account of the passing of time, and the uncertainties and trials of growing up. Though even then, it's a song whose lyrics are subject to discussion - one of the great virtues of Young as a lyricist is that things are never clear, never overtly personal or directly socio-political, but nor are they abstract and vague to the point of aloofness. There's a sense of careful ambiguity about them, a sense that these short fragments can be about anything we want them to be about. The other truly beautiful standout is the remarkable "Birds," which looks at the pain of having to soothe and reassure a loved one that you have to leave behind.

What this album lacks overall, when looked at as a part of the wider context of Neil Young, is a single, true, out-and-out classic standout song, in the way that 1972's Harvest offers up "Heart Of Gold" as one of the crowning achievements of Young's songwriting. But despite the lack of a true standout, After The Gold Rush is by far the more accomplished and mature and consistent album, and also the one that holds a higher personal place in my affections given the way it opened up a whole new world of music to me that I had up to that point been largely ignorant of.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Neil Young except where noted.

1. Tell Me Why

2. After The Gold Rush

3. Only Love Can Break Your Heart

4. Southern Man

5. Till The Morning Comes

6. Oh Lonesome Me (Don Gibson)

7. Don't Let It Bring You Down

8. Birds

9. When You Dance I Can Really Love

10. I Believe In You

11. Cripple Creek Ferry