RINGING DOWN THE YEARS

With the release of Dave Cousins' new Strawbs outing The Magic Of It All, with its replacement musicians, I decided to backtrack on other Strawbs albums with musical chairs and found this album in my collection originally released in 1991. Ringing Down The Years finds Dave moonlighting from his job as a radio station program director and follows the similar sounding Don't Say Goodbye released a few years earlier. That album may be superior as it has less covers of past Strawbs songs but this album has a couple of bonified gems. The moving title track, an ode to the late Sandy Denny, and the very baroque "The King", with Kathy Lesurf of the Albion Band adding support vocals, genuinely stand out.

Two older once departed bandmates Richard Hudson on drums and Tony Hooper on acoustic guitar and backing vocals are onboard for this outing, with the superlative Brian Willoughby on lead guitar (replacing the great Dave Lambert who was reported to have been a ski instructor in Switzerland after his retirement from the music business). On bass and keyboards are new members Rod Derick and Chris Parren. All of the above are hold overs from the previous Don't Say Goodbye album.

If I have one big compliant against this album is its late 80s sounding production with loud cracking snare drums and muted bass, along with some new wave sounding synths, generally dragging the songs down. The two remakes, "Tell Me What You See In Me" and "Grace Darling" are especially affected by this as the new arrangements might have worked better in a more 70s production style. We'll never know. One song that does work well with the new wave accoutrements is the lead off track "Might As Well Be On Mars', which is a cover of a song of an obscure (to me) Canadian new wave group called the Pukka Orchestra. No wonder. "Afraid To Let You Go" is the better of two songs written by Parren/Hudson/Willoughby. The other being "Taking A Chance". The former sung by Parren and sounding similar to Dave Lambert, the second sung by Hudson. This does add a bit of continuity to the group's sound, whatever that's worth. As others might overlook the album's production I think that 3 stars is sufficient. Just don't look for any prog here.