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The Sea and Sandy

Melody Maker, 3 September 1971

Submitted by No'am Newman

Karl Dallas previews Sandy Denny's first solo album, The North Star Grassman And The Ravens

We always knew Sandy Denny had the capacity to make a brilliant record, and we were right. I've just been listening (and listening and listening) to an advance copy of her September 3 album, The North Star Grassman And The Ravens.

It is the album we hoped for from Fotheringay and never got, for though the personnel is far from identical, at its most successful this record often sounds like the accomplishment of everything Fotheringay were so obviously striving after. Also, despite the impressive names working with her, this is far from the super group ego trip it might well have become.

Nor has Sandy done what I thought and rather feared she might, and put herself up on that superstar throne vacated by Joplin and so wisely left vacant. She could have done it. Just listen to what she does with Brenda Lee's Let's Jump The Broomstick on this record if you doubt for one moment that she does not have that elusive complanation of talent and personality which could make her one of the world's top female rockers.

But Sandy has always been a band singer. Even in the days when she was a solo folkie toting her guitar around the clubs she was basically a band singer waiting for the right band to turn up. Then it did, and for a while it was called Fairport Convention. Though Fotheringay's potential was much greater than anything they actually achieved before they broke up, they were not in the Fairport class, but now that Richard Thompson is freelancing again the result is a Fairport - plus - Fotheringay sound that is actually much greater than the sum of its constituent parts.

The good thing is that as Richard is also working together with Sandy in her live appearances, we can expect to hear something approximating the sound of this beautiful record.

One of the remarkable things about it is its internal cohesion. Not since Procol Harum's Salty Dog have I heard a record in which one song succeeds another with the same sort of inevitability, making the entire record a work of art. Salty Dog may come to mind, perhaps, because in Sandy's record there is also a recurring image of the sea, which is not restricted to her own material, for we have also the traditional Blackwaterside and Dylan's Down in the Flood.

Perhaps water has some significance to Sandy, for the most effective song she did with Fotheringay was undoubtedly The Sea.

Many of the songs seem to be commenting upon the traumas of the breakup, though of course they may have a more personal reference we're not a part to. The opening Late November is full of parting symbols, saying “The tears that are shed, they won't come from me” and the second side opener, Next Time Around says “Then came the question and it was about time.”

The Optimist and Wretched Wilbur are another two in Sandy's series of sympathetic portraits of loser men she's known, in the tradition of Autopsy on Unhalfbricking and Nothing More on Fotheringay. On Optimist, Richard Thompson produces some very nice guitar that reminds me somewhat of Robbie Robertson, though Richard is, of course, one of the least derivative of guitarists.

Dylan's Flood has very staccato guitar, almost funky chicken in its inspiration, on a track which is very much in a similar vein to the old Fairport renditons of other Dylan songs like Million Dollar Bash. On my acetate copy of the record, Sandy's vocal begins rather indistinctly, but possibly this will be remedied on the final mix, for it's the only technical fault on a really superb piece of recording, crystal clear from start to finish, with all the instruments placed with distinct spacial accuracy that is an example to lesser engineers.

If someone thinks of issuing Jump The Broomstick as a single (and it moves enough to make it into the charts), I can imagine some of our schlock disk jockeys dismissing it with the remark that they prefer Brenda Lee's original. As an original, so do I, and I bet Sandy does too, but the point is that this treatment is a commentary upon it, which takes the original as its starting point.

And if anyone objects that Sandy is a folk singer, not a rocker (you mean they're two different things) I'll only point out that jumping the broomstick in lieu of a wedding is a folk custom which goes back to the days of whichcraft. So there.

Which takes us to Blackwaterside, which stacks up alongside Sandy's other great recording of traditional songs, like A Sailor's Life and Reynardine and Banks Of The Nile.

The song that will really copulate with your mind, however, is John The Gun, which is not merely a very powerful lyric, with an expectedly twisting melody line to match, but it also has a guv'nor fiddle solo from Barry Dransfield.

The title song, with its images of a wandering sailor (the sea again) searching for the North Star, seems to echo Sandy's own quest for musical perfection. It's followed, and the record ends, with Crazy Lady which seems to issue in a more relaxed, more quietly confident mood in her work which would be nice, for if anyone has the right to be quietly confident about her ability, that person is Sandy Denny.

There is some immaculate work on this track from the world's boss pedal steel man, Buddy Emmons. But here, as throughout, the brilliance of the soloists cannot obscure the fact that this is Sandy's record, first, last, and in between.