MORNING WAY

I hunted down this album as a part of my personal conquest for hippie folk rock pastoral sequences, and I was particularly motivated to hear this after earlier delighted experiences of Judy Dyble's beautiful vocal tones, heard from the first Fairport Convention record and earlier version of King Crimson's "I Talk to The wind" song. I admit I was slightly disappointed with my expectations, as though there are lovely tracks on the album, it doesn't work very well as a complete LP entity in my opinion.

The album focuses mostly to medieval mood creation with rawer approach, the feminine elements more counterbalancing the masculine middle-age themes, and not being on the spotlight of the arena. Jackie McAuley leads the vocals of many songs, and the rustic acoustic flavors are supported with light chamber orchestra instrumentation. Psychedelic musical solutions appear as vocal effect treatments and abstract sonic collages binding the songs - these in my opinion dispensable sonic constructions reminding the post-production solutions of "From Genesis to Revelation" record. There are also some visitations to different musical styles, like Judy's sung old school "Down and Out Blues", American folk rock beat of "Sheena" and light bossa nova chill-outs of "Better than Today".

Some of my own favorite songs of the album were "Three Rings for The Eleven Kings"; a short instrumental airy fairy vision from the glades, and the following "Growing Man" being a great composition and having nice short baroque string theme. "In My Loneliness" also shimmers with pretty sphere of purity and romantic feminine symphonic folk touch reminding the sound of The Gentle Soul. The title song "Morning Way" has also very attractive melodic progressions and Jackie's and Judy's vocal dialogue, uniting to harmonic duo at the end. From the CD bonus tracks covering the original singles, "Here Comes The Rain" is also a charming Beatlesque folk pop rock gem. Though I found this as a quite sympathetic vintage progressive folk recording, it still did not fit completely to my own tastes, and appeared to have slightly unbalanced quality. However warmhearted kind songs from the past days are most usually positive things in a cold, calculated world of violence.