Released - November 1971
Genre - Folk
Producer - John Martyn & John Wood
Selected Personnel - John Martyn (Vocals/Guitar/Harmonica/Keyboards); Richard Thompson (Guitar); Smiley DeJonnes (Percussion); Beverley Martyn (Guitar/Vocals); Danny Thompson (Double Bass); Tony Reeves (Double Bass/Bass Guitar); Ian Whiteman (Keyboards); Roger Powell (Drums)
Standout Track - Go Easy
Last summer, I found myself writing reviews for Nick Drake albums barely a couple of weeks, or even a matter of days after I'd listened to them (partly so that I could still crowbar them into this blog with a vague semblance of a chronological order), and as such found myself writing reviews for albums that were still very fresh in my mind, but so undeniably brilliant that they required very little time for me to be well aware that I loved them. Now, several months on, I find myself in a similar position with one of Drake's closest friends and contemporaries, John Martyn. I only started listening to Martyn's music over the last month or so, and Bless The Weather in particular is one I listened to for the first time barely a week ago, but already he's come to be a figure who's delighted and fascinated me, one who has the same expert eye for effortlessly effective and powerful simple folk music while also (later on in the 70s, at least), developing a demonstrably experimental and innovative streak, willing to push the boundaries of his music to keep it unpredictable and daring as well as being powerful and memorable.
As with a bunch of artists, I owe my awareness of Martyn to by brother Barney, who told me a couple of years ago that he'd been getting into him and one of his albums would make a good birthday present. I bought him Sunday's Child, which I still haven't gotten round to listening to, and thought no more about it until I found him fairly well-represented in the book of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, while also learning of his connection to figures who had become major heroes of my own in the intervening time - most notably Drake, but also Paul Kossoff of Free. As a result, I started dipping into Martyn's extensive discography, and it's probably a journey that I'll continue going on over the coming months. There was also the fact that Barney talked about Martyn in such passionate and convincing tones that I couldn't help but be interested in him - he was keen to point out certain parallels between Martyn's upbringing and our own, namely that he was the son of classical musician parents who divorced when he was very young. He went on to describe him as "basically a modern-day Falstaff" and as "a man eating life." Essentially, he was presented to me as a figure I couldn't help but be interested in, particularly as a counterpoint to the legacy of Nick Drake, a shy, introverted and deeply troubled man. Here was somebody who seemed to make the same kind of music but informed by a whole-hearted love of life rather than a tremulous fear of it.
As is habitual for me in choosing which of an artist's albums to prioritise, I came to Bless The Weather thanks to its high rating on rateyourmusic, and the fact that it seems to have created something of a legacy for itself (nothing near the legacy of his most celebrated albums, Solid Air and One World, but it seemed a good jumping-in point for his early work). By 1971, Martyn had already released a couple of solo albums as a folk singer-songwriter before then working on a further couple of albums as part of a creative partnership with his wife, Beverley Martyn. After the second of these albums, The Road To Ruin, Island Records decided that Martyn was easier to market as a solo act than as part of a husband-and-wife double act, so returned him to centre-stage for Bless The Weather, though Beverley still provides guitar and vocals here. Though I've not heard any of these early albums, I understand that Bless The Weather represents the culmination of all the work Martyn did in the late 60s to find his voice and his sound before achieving huge success with 1973's Solid Air. Certainly, it doesn't have the inventiveness and the real mastery of ambience and atmosphere that that album has, but what one does see here is somebody who has mastered simple, beautiful folk music.
Bless The Weather is by no means a particularly challenging or daring record for somebody already familiar with a lot of folk singer-songwriters of the late 60s and early 70s - most of the songs recall the light and breezy acoustic guitar style of Nick Drake, although here Martyn is able to maintain the focus on a core group of musicians without a studio executive overdubbing full string arrangements that threaten to muddy the palette of sounds on offer, as on Drake's Five Leaves Left. And it's a talented group that Martyn gathers together, and one that suits his own sensibilities well - the inclusion of guitarist Richard Thompson from Fairport Convention and double bassist Danny Thompson from the Pentangle shows how adept Martyn was at picking the best the folk scene had to offer, while Danny Thompson's freeform bass style allows for jazzy playfulness on the likes of "Head And Heart" that anticipates the more whole-heartedly diverse musical stylings of Solid Air. Principally, though, it's Martyn that's the focus of attention here - there's no sense in listening to Bless The Weather that we're listening to the work of a fully-fledged folk band like the Pentangle themselves, rather that we're listening to a singularly creative mind effortlessly painting his work onto the canvas presented by the other musicians.
Martyn's voice here is soft and clear, not a million miles away from Drake's, and starkly contrasts with the gruff drawl he would use from Solid Air onwards - that such a marked change in his vocal style should happen so abruptly from one album to the next is surprising, but personally I find his later style far more engaging and exciting to listen to. On Bless The Weather he sings prettily, but not outstandingly. Rather than taking the listener on a journey with moody atmospherics and moody growls, here he maintains focus on the prettiness of the songs themselves. "Go Easy" is one of the most simple and unaffected folk songs of all of Martyn's stuff I've listened to, with a brilliantly affecting and memorable melody and a beautiful acoustic guitar part. Personally, I find "Go Easy" as brilliant as anything on Solid Air or One World, and the rest of the album struggles to live up to its early promise. Not that the other songs disappoint, by any means, but "Go Easy" just strikes me as a truly brilliant song, at once beautifully and lazily reflective and unbearably poignant. The title track is a slightly darker, moodier and jazzier piece that sees Danny Thompson's light-fingered bass put to good effect and anticipates some of the smokey, late-night atmosphere of Martyn's later work. "Head And Heart" is in a similar vein, but the use of congas for percussion and the more insistent acoustic guitar riff makes it more immediately engaging and propulsive to my ear. "Back Down The River" is a gloriously simple and pastoral folk song, and the short cover of the timeless "Singin' In The Rain" may be slight and of little depth, but it's also a brilliantly sunny and feelgood interpretation that rounds off the album on a beautifully optimistic note.
Unlike some of Martyn's later work, there is some redundant material here - "Sugar Lump" is a fairly by-the-numbers and uninspiring blues number, while "Walk To The Water" suffers from a tedious and vaguely irritating steel drum part. "Glistening Glyndebourne," while not enormously engaging, is a very interesting piece worthy of comment. Over the course of his early albums, Martyn had gradually developed a signature sound involving running his acoustic guitar through the Echoplex distortion unit, and "Glistening Glyndebourne" is a lengthy free-form jam that utilises the unusual sound experiments of this set-up. Parts of it are genuinely exciting and cool-sounding, notably picking up pace about halfway through, but most of it feels too much like an aimless jam with little tune or direction. But it does ably demonstrate that, even when working on what was predominantly a fairly traditional folk album, Martyn had an eye on trying to create sounds that were unusual and genuinely innovative.
Ultimately, having heard only this and his two most celebrated works, it's impossible for me to get away from the fact that Bless The Weather is the worst of Martyn's albums I've heard, but then it's early days for my interest in him, and it faces stiff competition. It suffers only for its lack of ambition when compared to his later stuff, and ably showcases a musician of great talent who could churn out beautiful and interesting folk music in his sleep. After this, Martyn would indulge his experimental streak a little more and incorporate more jazz musicians and instruments into his lineup of recording artists to create an album of incredible atmosphere and beauty. But for a piece of gloriously simple singer-songwriter fare, you could do much worse than Bless The Weather and it's probably a fine place to start getting into the work of a genuinely remarkable artist.
Track Listing:
All songs written by John Martyn, except where noted.
1. Go Easy
2. Bless The Weather
3. Sugar Lump
4. Walk To The Water
5. Just Now
6. Head And Heart
7. Let The Good Things Come
8. Back Down The River
9. Glistening Glyndebourne
10. Singin' In The Rain (Nacio Herb Brown & Arthur Freed)
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