... AND OTHER SHORT STORIES

'Short Stories' has to be considered a bit of a letdown for BJH fans after their groundbreaking orchestral-folk debut and stellar follow-up 'Once Again'. The songs on this one remind me just a bit of the Moody Blues' 'On the Threshold of a Dream', and not just because both bands' music was steeped in orchestral arrangements and emotive, affecting vocals. In both cases the bands were coming off heavy touring schedules and in the midst of lots of pressure from their labels. In both cases the songwriting process was somewhat rushed, resulting in themes familiar to them such as family, relationships and pastoral wordscapes.

And in both cases the groups came up with albums that demonstrated their technical prowess and professionalism but do not rank among their greatest studio efforts.

John Lees does manage to open the record with a keeper though, the still-memorable BJH classic "Medicine Man" with its loose coupling to the theme of the Ray Bradbury novel 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'. His eerie vocals set to Martyn Ford's orchestral arrangements (he replaced Robert John Godfrey for this album) are stellar and instantly memorable. If only the rest of the songs had reached the same bar this would have been a classic album for sure.

The late Wooly Wolstenholme delivered two solid compositions for this record ("Someone There You Know" and "Ursula (The Swansea Song)"). In both cases the theme is lost love, and given the tender delivery I suppose both of them were autobiographical in nature. While both songs are technically proficient, neither advances the band's overall sound much, and in the case of "Ursala" I think the sappy string arrangement takes away from the overall tone of the rest of the tracks on the album.

"Harry's Song" is a bit hard to follow and like "Ursala" is based on a rather personal theme, that of the death of one of John Lees' pet parrots. The first time I heard the words I thought this was a treatise on the callous disregard so many have for common folk and the downtrodden. It was only after seeing liner notes for the reissue and reading other reviews that the real story emerged. I think I prefer to stick with my interpretation anyway.

"Little Lapwig" is another bird song so apparently the lyrics were written by Lees, but Les Holroyd plays pretty much all the guitars on this one and sings as well, and was given the songwriting credits on the original album notes. This is an acoustic number in the vein of much of the band's first album, including the gorgeous harmonizing vocals that the band would slowly move away from as their career progressed. Les also wrote "Song with no Meaning", which is quite laconic as well and probably the weakest track on the album (no offense intended toward Mr. Holyrod).

And "Blue John's Blues" features another typical theme of road-weary musicians, that of a manager whose interests and ethics are in question. The song doesn't do much for me, but Lees plays some wicked guitar along with Wolstenholme's stilted piano tinkling and Lees' rocking vocals show a side of the band that they had previously not revealed. For those reasons I think this was a good choice for inclusion. Wolstenholme actually wrote "The Poet" which appears on the backside of the album as well, so technically he delivered three songs and not two as I stated above. But this is an older tune resurrected I suppose to fill out the album and one that also doesn't quite fit here. Given the infighting and egos that eventually tore the band apart, the story it tells of a pretentious and fickle artist is as much prophecy as it is music.

And speaking of prophecy, Lees closes the album with the apocryphal end-of-world BJH standard "After the Day", possibly the best-known and remembered song from this album. The guitar work is creepy and made even more so by the mournful string effects and echoing treatment on the vocal tracks. This is a depressing song but has all the earmarks of the better BJH work, so in that respect it salvages what would otherwise probably only be a modest effort.

While this is certainly not the best Barclay James Harvest album, it is at least among the better work they did which was most of everything they released before the end of the seventies. The first and last songs are the best on this album, and are also the only ones I personally would include on a 'Best of' collection were I picking the tracklist. I'm going to lay four stars on this, but with the caveat that it really is more like 3.6 but deserves the bump simply because it stands up almost as well now as when it was first released. If you are new to the band pick up their first two records and 'Octoberon' before you check this one out, but once you've gotten that far this one certainly belongs in your collection too.

peace