[Today: John & Beverley Martyn see dark clouds on the horizon...]
Some albums are utterly steeped in the time and place they were recorded, and Stormbringer is clearly a product of Woodstock, NY, circa 1969/70. The album reeks of incense and the power of positive thinking, and all the musicians who played on it (including Band drummer Levon Helm) lived in the Woodstock region. The cover photo finds the Martyns nestled down in a field. At first glance it appears to be the hippy ideal – back to nature and all that – but on closer inspection it’s clear that they’re camped out in a barren bog, John Martyn’s crusty tennis shoes and matted hair telling a pungent story, while storm clouds bear down on the pair.
The music within follows the same arc. John & Bev’s voices spin out pretty folk melodies balanced atop a bed of lovely acoustic piano, guitar, bass, and drum. A cursory listen might lead you to believe this is a garden variety happy hippy album, but a peek at the lyric sheet reveals that all wasn’t well in paradise. When the pair spiral off into repeated choruses of “Everything’s all right…” in ‘John The Baptist’, it’s obvious that everything is not all right. This album is pitched perfectly at a point in time when it was becoming clear that hippy ideals were sagging beneath the weight of their own lofty expectations.
Beverley Martyn uses her lilting voice to pierce arrows in several countercultural concepts. When she draws out the simple lyrics of ‘Sweet Honesty’ it’s hard to tell if she’s extolling the virtue or cursing its absence. The song cuts even as it cures, and it’s one of a number of tracks that pulls the same trick. Stormbringer is a simple album about a pastoral life full of love and woodsy strolls and boundless optimism. But beneath that sunny veneer is a complicated album about complicated lives, and people who are trying to square their vision of what it all means with the conflicting ideals of those around them.
Hence those storm clouds…
Listen: Go Out And Get It
Tags: Folk, John & Beverley Martyn, Stormbringer, Woodstock
12 January 2008 at 5:15 am |
I dont know anything of this, but I like it a great deal
12 January 2008 at 6:17 am |
Be sure to check out some of John Martyn’s solo stuff too. ‘Solid Air’ is an excellent album, and all of his stuff without Beverley sounds a little different – less focused on harmonies, and more focused on guitars.
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