Wednesday, 3 January 2018

Mary Hopkin - Earth Song, Ocean Song


Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still a very decent album



I was trying to be far too cool and into Traditional Folk Music (with capital letters, of course) to buy a Mary Hopkin album in 1971, while probably just being a pretentious 17-year-old pillock.  Such are the follies of youth, but I tried this now mainly because of the cast list of excellent musicians: Ralph McTell, Dave Cousins, the brilliant Danny Thompson and so on, plus Tony Visconti as producer.  It's not a classic and sounds slightly dated in places, but it's a good album.

Mary Hopkin was a good singer.  She's not one of the greats, but she had a very good voice and there's far more to her delivery than the rather winsome, innocent, once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-tavern impression she has left on a lot of us.  There is some good material here and she delivers it very well; There's Got To Be More sounds sincere and pretty powerful, for example (and also features some terrific bass playing from Danny Thompson) and there is plenty more on this album to make me take notice.

If you're interested in the more folky sound of the early 70s, I think this is well worth a try.  There are some good songs sung by a more-than-decent singer, with excellent backing musicians and production.  Recommended.

No comments:

Post a Comment