> Sandy Denny > Sandy Denny Album Reviews

Sandy Denny Album Reviews

Various reviews from newspapers and magazines

> Sandy Denny > Rendevouz review

Rendezvous review

This is the album we have been waiting for since Sandy left Fairport for the second time at the end of 1975. Over six months ago there were rumours that she had produced something rather remarkable, but as the months went by and a projected tour failed to materialise, one began to wonder if the happily pregnant lady wasn’t about to settle down to domesticity for a while.

There’s no question that it’s a remarkably powerful album. The opening chords of the first song, Richard Thompson’s I Wish I Was a Fool for You, crash out from the speakers like a Mahler symphony, and at times that gorgeous voice is all but swamped by the arrangements. There is some nice guitar on the play-out of this opening track, which may perhaps be Thompson, though it sounds a bit like Jerry Donahue; both musicians are credited with playing on the album, but there is no track-by-track listing of who plays on what.

Second track is Sandy’s own Gold Dust, a song which is slightly reminiscent of Joni Mitchell, not merely in the funky sweep of its melody, but also in its subject matter.

Then comes Elton and Bernie’s Candle in the Wind, which is a bit of a mistake, I feel. Not only is nothing much new done with it to justify its inclusion, but in just a few places Sandy’s pitching is not as certain as it might be - a surprising fault in such a technician.

We are back with Sandy’s own compositions with Take Me Away, and One Way Donkey Ride, which close the first site. The first is one of those stop-rhythm blues waltzes (the progenitor of which, I suppose, was Ketty Lester’s Love Letters) with another fine guitar solo, which has to be Donahue. This could make a good single. Donkey is the first time, however, that we hear the authentic, immediately recognisable Sandy: shifting, allusive lyrics, whose exact meaning always seems to be slightly to one side of understanding, but which nevertheless touches a responsive chord in any hearer with an element of sensitivity, sung convincingly, accompanied unobtrusively. Not a vintage Denny song, but immediately recognisable.

As side two opens, it seems as if Sandy is, for the first time on this album, at least finding the ingredients to write in this distinctive mould without sacrificing commercial appeal. There is nothing hard to fathom about this song, I’m a Dreamer, which is clearly autobiographical. The melody is strong, and the strong arrangement not so overpowering as some of the rest.

All Our Days is entirely Sandy’s work. She has composed an almost classical, free-ranging melody that taxes her vocal talents to the very fullest, and Harry Robertson has given her an arrangement in the same vein, which showcases both voice and melody superbly. This is a tour de force by any standards, and Sandy pulls it off.

It is followed, in a superb stroke of inspired programming, by that good old sentimental country standard, Silver Threads and Golden Needles. The pleasure this track engenders in the listener continues to rise with the last song, No More Sad Refrains, which is what it sounds like, a lyrical, up-mood ballad about putting hard times behind you. This song, for my money, is what I would have liked to have had much more of on this album, which, for all its individual pleasurable moments, doesn’t really hang together as a total artifact. Though it’s enough to have Sandy back on the turntable again, the album isn’t quite the break-through that rumour had led me to expect.

Perhaps that’s all the good, because Sandy has always been at her best when she has been uniquely, undeniably herself. There are enough moments like this to make this an album worth treasuring, even if it isn’t the greatest thing she has ever done.

— K.D.

> Sandy Denny > The Attic Tracks review

The Attic Tracks review

Review from the British national newspaper “The Daily Telegraph”, Saturday January 6, 1996, by Colin Randall.

Sandy Denny and Trevor Lucas The Attic Tracks 1972-1984, Special Delivery, on licence from Raven.

Sandy Denny was one of Mary Black’s early influences. She was, in her more vulnerable way, a wonderful singer and an impressive songwriter. Her death after a fall in 1978 robbed music of a rare treasure.

John Penhallow, who runs the Friends of Fairport (Convention) organisation in Australia, is to be congratulated for turning a collection of neglected tapes into so worthwhile a project.

Denny’s Australian husband, Trevor Lucas, became prominent in 1970s English folk-rock, and it was in his attic that the tapes were discovered in 1987, two years before his own death.

Ecoute, Ecoute, a French version of a song familiar to most Denny fans, and a slow, live Who Knows Where the Time Goes?, are two of the resulting gems in this absorbing album.

Sales of the 78-minute CD will aid Georgia, the daughter of Denny and Lucas, and Lucas’s son.

> Sandy Denny > The Original Sandy Denny review

The Original Sandy Denny review

Denny’s first recording, originally released in 1967, is her most traditional effort. Backed only by her own acoustic guitar, Denny’s 20-year-old voice is assured, pure, and powerful on her debut. The album features traditional folk staples like This Train, Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor, and Pretty Polly, as well as covers of Tom Paxton’s My Ramblin’ Boy and Milk and Honey. There are also a couple songs by the obscure American songwriter Jackson Frank, one of which she would soon perform with Fairport Convention (You Never Wanted Me). Although this has little of the folk/rock cross-pollination that Denny would soon master with Fairport and others, it is still an impressive LP that shows her voice in as haunting and commanding form as her more renowned recordings.

— Richie Unterberger

> Sandy Denny > Who Knows Where the Time Goes review (1)

Who Knows Where the Time Goes review (1)

This definitive collection, a 3-CD boxed set with 20-page booklet, features over 50 per cent previously unreleased material from studio recordings, live performances, out-takes and demos, plus remixed versions of some of her best. The songs and notes trace her history and remarkable singing and songwriting contributions to Fairport Convention and Fotheringay, plus early works from Sandy and the Strawbs, rockers from The Bunch, and many solo selections. She was one of the originators of British folk-rock, influencing a decade of British and American music by introducing traditional balladry and a revivalist folk approach to the acid rock generation. A must for fans!

— Ladyslipper

> Sandy Denny > Who Knows Where the Time Goes review (2)

Who Knows Where the Time Goes review (2)

This magnificently produced multi-disc boxed set presents a complete portrait of Sandy Denny, the haunting singer, the melodic, mournful songwriter, and the mesmerizing bandleader of Fairport Convention and Fotheringay. Much of the material is previously unheard, but it’s all of a piece with Denny’s accomplished work on her solo albums and in her groups. The album makes the case for Denny as a major folk artist.

— William Ruhlmann

> Sandy Denny > Who Knows Where the Time Goes review (3)

Who Knows Where the Time Goes review (3)

Sandy Denny possessed an incredible voice: gentle and caressing but with the ability to rise with passion and conviction; full of benevolence and hope but cut with an edge of pain and a lingering air of sadness. From the funny, self-deprecating introduction to the opening song, The Lady, to the finale, a live version of the hauntingly beautiful title track, this box set successfully captures the essence of Denny’s music. She merged British folk and rock as a member of the Strawbs, Fairport Convention, and Fotheringay and as a solo artist, well documented here via album tracks, demos, and previously unreleased songs, live and in the studio. Denny’s gift was such that she was equally comfortable with the breezy folk of Fotheringay’s Two Weeks Last Summer as with the smoky jazz of Whispering Grass or the crunching Tam Lin, a rocking Fairport Convention cover of a traditional song spiked with Richard Thompson’s writhing electric guitar solo. Denny was also a talented songwriter, bold enough to examine tangled emotions with clear eyes and sharp enough to detail inner conflict with a few words. “I live in the city and imagine country scenes,” she sings in The Pond and the Stream as Fotheringay’s delicate interplay between acoustic and electric folk supports her musings. On the handful of moving songs she performs solely with her own accompaniment on guitar or piano, Denny’s spirit floats with quintessential grace. After Halloween, for example, is a gorgeous ballad full of stirring memories and bittersweet yearning. Denny also shows flexibility with her adept cover songs, which include a hypnotic version of Thompson’s For Shame of Doing Wrong, an easygoing duet with Linda Thompson on the Everly Brothers’ When Will I Be Loved?, an upbeat, horn-pumped romp through Ernest Tubb’s Walking the Floor Over You, and a brilliant take on Bob Dylan’s Tomorrow Is a Long Time, with ‘Sneaky’ Pete Kleinow’s swooping pedal steel encircling Denny’s warm vocals. This impressive box set, just released on CD, also contains an album-sized booklet full of lyrics, musician credits for each song, and lots of black-and-white photos. Denny died in 1978 after a tragic fall down a flight of stairs, but her music lives on.

—Mark J. Cadigan, Roundup newsletter

> Sandy Denny > Who Knows Where the Time Goes review (4)

Who Knows Where the Time Goes review (4)

I forgot how may years ago it was when I first heard the news that Trevor Lucas and Joe Boyd were producing a collection of recordings celebrating the vocal and song-writing gifts of the late Sandy Denny but I’d long since dismissed it as groundless rumour. Thankfully my doubts were unfounded. Seven years in the collating, Who Knows Where the Time Goes is a beautifully packaged boxed set of four albums and a booklet, the album containing 43 songs and the lyrics of all those composed by the lady herself. As indicated in the song Tam Lin, predictably and deservedly included in this collection, the period of seven years has magical connotations and certainly some wizardry has taken place in the tape vaults of Island Records and the BBC because 21 previously unreleased songs and performances have been conjured up in which Sandy casts her usual spell.

Mind you, when I read something like “21 previously unreleased songs and performances” I am immediately suspicious. Why were they unreleased? Weren’t they good enough? Why give us ‘live’ performances, out-takes and demos when we could have the final pukka studio versions? I was certainly asking these questions as I settled down for several marathon 3 1/2-hour listening sessions.

What answers did I come up with? Well, just one really. All the high points of this collection, for me at any rate, are provided by the newly-released stuff. Whether that’s due to the novelty of hearing it for the first time is hard to say. Certainly the uncluttered sound of just Sandy and guitar on the demo versions of Sweet Rosemary and By the Time It Gets Dark and the emotional impact of the ‘live’ performances of Solo and Nothing More compare very favourably with the slightly dated and over-elaborate arrangements of some of the studio recordings issued here. I found Harry Robinson’s strings particularly O.T.T. Having said that though, his work on the previously unreleased Full Moon, which also features Acker Bilk on clarinet, adds considerably to the poignancy of the penultimate song in the set (the ultimate one is, of course the title track, recorded live with Fairport in 1974).

My favourite setting for Sandy’s voice, when not on her own, was with her band Fotheringay. So it was with some considerable pleasure that I greeted the inclusion of Late November, previously only available on an Island sampler, and pleasure had give way to downright ecstasy on hearing two tracks from Fotheringay’s second album which never saw the light of pressing plant. One of these is Gypsy Davey, a classic Denny performance of a folk song and, as it happens, one of only five classic Denny performances of a folk song included here. Admittedly this collection was intended to demonstrate Sandy’s songwriting talents as well as her skills as a singer but I would have thought her interpretation of traditinal songs warranted more than just a one-eight share of this boxed set. Is A Sailor’s Life doomed never to be included in any anthology because of its length?

And speaking of omissions, there’s nothing from What We Did On Our Holidays! Perhaps Meet on the Ledge has already been re-released to death, but I reckon Fotheringay or Dylan’s I’ll Keep It With Mine deserved inclusion. Mind you, there is an opportunity to hear Sandy and Ian Matthews singing together in a Fairport Mk II recording salvaged from a 1968 edition of “Top Gear”, a performance of Jackson C. Frank’s You Never Wanted Me.

Finally, the presentation. The photos are superb, a joy to look at and a perfect aid to the old memoire. However, captions could have provided a further aide had they been given and the inclusion of a brief biography would not have gone amiss. Comparatively minor points though. On a plus side, I particularly liked the way that the tracks were arranged according to mood rather than in cold chronological order. A great step forward for anthologies that! As a memorial to one of the finest folk-rock singers we ever had, the finest in my opinion, Who Knows Where the Time Goes is nigh on perfect and a credit to all involved.

— Lawrence Heath (from an unknown source)

> Sandy Denny > Who Knows Where the Time Goes review (4)

Listen, Listen: An Introduction To Sandy Denny

This is the first Sandy Denny compilation to concentrate on her solo work, so often overshadowed by Fairport Convention. It’s astonishing how under-appreciated Sandy’s albums are; though none can be hailed as classic, they all contain sensitive, moving compositions, sung and arranged with care and expertise. Maybe the melancholy is too much for the general populace, as songs like Next Time Around and No End will hardly lift people’s spirits, but, as with Nick Cave’s best work, there’s a cleansing, redemptive quality in these soul-outpourings.

The greates sadness is, of course, her early death; she might not have become a major star, but one feels she would certainly have embraced the Cropredy phenomen.

— Record Collector #244, December 1999