Prog Britannia - Album Reviews

The album opens with "Jenny May", a lovely acoustic Folk ballad with Judy Dyble's gorgeous honeyed vocals floating like a warm summer breeze over the gentle bucolic melody. Altogether now, "Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind." ..... This quaint sunny Folk tune does indeed make you feel fine and it sounds as quintessentially English as a game of cricket on the village green. The next song sounds very reminiscent of the old Christmas carol, "We Three Kings of Orient Are", which just happens to rhyme with the song title, "Children Of Oare". One of the charming things about this album is each song concludes with a brief but beautiful pastoral flute melody to interlink all of the songs together. The next exquisite piece of music "Three Rings for Elven Kings" is a soft and gentle instrumental number for flute and autoharp, with the autoharp resembling the sound of a harpsichord. Next up is "Growing Man", featuring Judy Dyble's delightful vocals right at the forefront with Jackie McAuley on backing vocals. The music sounds semi-classical, featuring a mini woodwind orchestra, and it's a song that could have had pride of place on an early Fairport Convention album, especially bearing in mind that Judy Dyble was the lead singer on their debut album. It's time now for some "Down and Out Blues", which is just what it says on the label - a mournful bluesy number where Judy Dyble does indeed sound down and out and penniless with these heart-felt lyrics:- "No nobody wants you, When you're down and out, In your pocket's not one penny, And all your pretty friends, You haven't any." ..... Cheer up Judy because the next song "The Mixed-Up Kind" is an altogether jollier tune which sounds like a lost classic which could have come right off Fairport Convention's illustrious first album. It's a truly beautiful melody carried along by the mellifluous strings of the autoharp with Judy Dyble's crystal-clear vocals sounding at their absolute best here. This tremendously appealing song represents the stunning highlight of the album so far and it's also by far the longest song on the album at over six minutes in duration. This song is six minutes of sheer beauty and joyous delight. It's as good as, if not better than anything Fairport Convention have ever done.

Side Two opens cheerfully with "Better Than Today", and what could be better than listening to this charming pastoral Folk melody today, or any day come to that. There's some truly beautiful harmonising between Judy Dyble and Jackie McAuley on this lovely Folk song. The next song "In My Loneliness" is a mournful ballad (just as the song title implies) featuring weeping violins and with Judy Dyble sounding at her most imploringly passionate best here. There's a change of pace for "Sheena", an up-tempo and uplifting melody that swings along exuberantly on a wave of eternal optimism, in the style of some of the best music from the sunshine state of California. In contrast to Side One, where all of the songs concluded with a brief pastoral flute melody, all of the songs on Side Two conclude with a brief tinkling of the ivories. The next song "The Mutant" is a doleful melancholy ballad with Jackie McAuley taking lead vocal duties for a change. And now we come to the title track "Morning Way", a song with trippy lyrics which probably comes closest to the Psych-Folk that Trader Horne are sometimes labelled as. Again, there's some gorgeous multi-tracked harmonising to be heard on this four and a half minutes of musical magic. It's time now for "Velvet to Atone", a solo piano piece with Judy Dyble's crystal-clear vocals gleaming with all of the sparkling beauty of a crystal chandelier. The album concludes with "Luke That Never Was", which opens to the sound of a solemn church organ, although this is just a prelude to a good old-fashioned happy-clappy tambourine song to sing along to in church. If only they really DID sing rousing spiritual songs as good as this in the local parish church, the vicar would surely approve.

"Morning Way" is a charmingly beautiful, one-off gem of a Folk album that we can all treasure for posterity half a century on from it's initial release. Trader Horne's marvellous album is a very pleasant reminder of why we just love those bygone halcyon days of the 1970's, which often brings to mind the poignant refrain, "They don't make music like this any more." ..... which is a shame. Trader Horne are sometimes labelled as Prog-Folk and occasionally as Psych-Folk, but it's basically just an all-round good English Folk album with no strings (or labels) attached.