Here’s my understanding of how British folk rock came about: Psychedelia and blues rock ruled Britannia until the first copy of The Band’s Music From Big Pink hit the island. Upon hearing it, half the bands then in existence dropped their hookahs and said, “My God! We must celebrate our English heritage!” Poof! Away went the caftans and paisley, just like that.
No doubt I’m missing a few details. Close enough for rock & roll, as they say, or in this case, close enough for folk psych.
Anyway, foremost of the bands to do thusly was, of course, Fairport Convention. Any bands that featured both Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny would have to be top of the heap, wouldn’t they? There’s really not much of a debate about that, to my mind. Someday I imagine I’ll write something about them.
Today is not that day. Instead, we’ll be examining what you might call the poor man’s Fairport Convention, Trees. Both bands had the British folk mixed with West Coast psych thing going on (although the psych angle was much stronger in Trees), and both had the winsome female lead vocal aspect. Trees were very much in the Fairport mold, it’s true, but they were also enough of their own band to stand alone.
The band recorded two albums, both released in 1970. Yes, that’s right: two studio albums of new material in the same year. Take that, all you bands who take three years to dribble out an album chock full of filler. I’ve never heard the debut, The Garden of Jane Delawney; from all accounts it’s not all that different from the album I do have, On The Shore. So that’s the one we’re going with.
Vocalist Celia Humphris is no Sandy Denny, just as guitarist Barry Clarke is no Richard Thompson. Then again, who is? Both do respectable jobs here. Humphris’ voice isn’t quite as supple as Denny’s, but when she stays in her lower register it’s quite pleasant – she sounds a little strained for most of “Polly on the Shore”, for example, but on the lush, epic “Sally Free and Easy”, her natural warmth shines through. Her doubled vocals (the band couldn’t choose between takes, so wisely chose to include both) toward the end of that track add a pleasant otherworldly nature to the proceedings. Sadly, though, most of the songs here are at the top of her range and thus don’t really do her any favors. I’d have to consider her the weak link of the group. Your mileage, as always, may vary.
As for Clarke, his playing is what first brought the band to my attention. I had a little time to kill before work one day, so I decided to do so in a nearby music shop. When I came through the door, they were playing something with some wild psych guitar work. Being the sucker for such stuff that I am, I asked the clerk who it was. Lo & behold: Trees. Clarke definitely had that sort of west coast psych quality (Airplane, Quicksilver, etc.) to his fretwork. I realize that’s not necessarily the gold seal of approval for some of you, but if you like that sort of thing this will appeal, I think.
The main songwriter of the band was Bias Boshell; he also played bass, keyboards, and provided a few vocals. Post-Trees, he seems to have hooked up with Kiki Dee (!), for whom he wrote “I’ve Got the Music in Me” (!!), and thence on to Barclay James Harvest and, um, the Moody Blues. Well, we won’t hold any of that against him. That’s all sorta beyond our scope, anyway. His bass-playing is fine, but is piano intro to “Sally Free and Easy” is top-notch, although apparently the song’s composer, Cyril Tawney, thought it sounded like a “silent movie soundtrack”. That’s according to acoustic guitarist Dave Costa, who is quoted extensively in the liner notes. I think Tawney may have been a bit high when he said that, but it’s his song so I suppose he’s entitled to his opinion. At any rate, the track is certainly one of the highlights of the disc.
Right, who does that leave? Costa brought in the trad. tunes (about half the numbers of the disc; the other half were written by Boshell, with the exception noted above). He also plays mandolin and electric 12-string. Oh, yeah, there's also drummer Unwin Brown. (You just don’t meet people named Unwin these days. At least I don’t.) In the liner notes, Costa refers to Brown as being “a very melodic and inventive drummer, but with little attack or drive”, which sounds about right. He’s placed very low in the mix, so it’s sometimes easy to forget there’s a drummer at all. What I can hear of him, though, is quite good. He stands out on “Streets of Derry”.
There are a couple of duff tracks. “Fool”, with its insistent “Oswald the smith has not returned” and repetitive riff gets a wee bit annoying, and the string-and-harp-laden “While The Iron Is Hot”, pro-union sentiment aside, strays a little too close to ham-fisted Jethro Tull territory for my taste when the electric guitar comes in. “Why pick on Tull, dude? What’s the difference?”, you ask. Well, it’s like this: Trees are basically Brit-folk with psychedelia grafted onto it, while Tull are hard rock with some Brit-folk trappings. Approach #1, when handled well, doesn’t really jar all that much; while Approach #2 usually jars a bit, it’s not without its own scruffy charm from time to time. Also, “ham-fisted” does not always mean “bad”; what it does mean is “unsubtle”. I’m always fascinated when two different styles of music collide. As they say in drag racing: sometimes they go, and sometimes they blow.
And la-de-da. For all my apparent bitching about this record, I really like it. This is not a disc that’s gonna appeal to everyone. It’ll be a little too Ren Faire (“Soldiers Three”, “Fool”, “Geordie”) for some of you, overly hippy-ish (“Sally Free & Easy”, maybe “Streets of Derry”) for others. And that’s fine. It’s best to wary of those who strive to be all things to all people, y’know. If you have an ear for the occasional extended jam – not Grateful Dead-extended, mind you; the longest track clocks in at 10:12 – it’d be worth checking out. It’s a sort of a lazy Spring Saturday afternoon kind of set, good for listening to while you’re airing out the house and pottering around in the kitchen.
I want to note a couple of things before I wrap up. First off, the eerie cover, designed by the same guy who did Dark Side of the Moon. No matter what else you might make of the album, you have to admire the somewhat spooky little girl (who, now that I think about it, is actually somewhere near my own age) flinging water across the garden. Also, Gnarls Barkley sampled “Geordie” on the title track of their smash hit album of last year, St. Elsewhere. A tip of the TATSOL cap to Dangermouse for that.
And finally, I was all set to hype The Eighteenth Day of May, a newish band who very definitely had listened to On The Shore more than a few times. When I went to look up their website today, I found that they’d split up last month. Wah! Well, no matter. If you enjoy Trees, I have no doubt that you’d like their eponymous album. And if you don’t enjoy Trees, thanks for reading down this far.
Thanks for the post. Yes excellent album, as is The Garden of Jane Delawney, available here.
http://peppermintstore.blogspot.com/2008/03/trees-in-garden-of-jane-delawney.html
Posted by: Wally Gellatau | September 26, 2009 at 03:56 AM