Virginia Astley - Promise Nothing (Sire/Crepescule, 1983)

OK, bring all your will to bear and try to imagine a hip Enya. No, forget it, that'll never happen. Alright, let's look at it this way--picture Julee Cruise if she was produced by Brian Eno instead of Angelo Badalamenti. And if she wrote her own songs and played most of her own instruments. Astley started out at the beginning of the '80s, making the kind of music that could almost pass for new age pop if you weren't paying attention, but it's much deeper and more substantive than that. Her sound is characterized by ethereal vocals, feathery waves of keyboards, and wispy wind instruments all shimmering around a gossamer soundscape, but while that description could easily apply to something really treacly and gross, Astley's work is quite beautiful. Instead of making you regurgitate your lunch like the aformentioned Celtic lass, Astley can legitimately engender a warm/fuzzy feeling in even the hardest of hearts with her ambient pop. This was her second LP, but it's actually a collection of mostly tracks she recorded before the first, which all include vocals, and a couple from the first album, which are instrumentals. Fitting her music, Astley seems like the retiring, reclusive type, and has only put out a handful of albums in the last 20 years, the latest one being (as near as I can tell) about eight years ago. For trivia-mongers, she's got connections to a lot of folks (played with Pete Townshend, and was his sister-in-law at some point, was in a band with Dream Academy's Kate St. John, etc.), but that's all rather beside the point. This is dreamy stuff, if you're willing to let down your guard.

Of Popsters and Pickin'

Addrisi Brothers - We've Got to Get it On Again (Columbia, 1972)

Hudson-Farnsworth - From Night to Day (ABC, 1975)

Here are a couple of interesting items I picked up for next to nothing at the Princeton Record Exchange. They're both by '70s soft-pop duos with Nashville session vet backing. As has been discussed here and elsewhere, after Dylan started recording in Nashville in the '60s, it became de rigeur for people outside the country realm to avail themselves of the fine musicianship and production available there (for a less impressive example of that I've blogged about recently, see my post about Mr. & Mrs. Garvey*).

Don & Dick Addrisi were best known for writing "Never My Love," a huge hit for the Association in the '60s (I read somewhere that it was one of the most-played songs ever on the radio). Though they had been kicking around the music biz since they were kids in the '50s, they didn't put out their own album until 1972. This catches them just at the right time when there was still enough of a post-Beatles writing and production sensibility to make things interesting, and before huge, cheesy '70s production took over the world. They're backed by Nashville session heavyweights of the day, including Norbert Putnam on bass, Kenneth Buttrey on drums, and even white-soul cult hero Eddie Hinton on guitar. These players help to ground the thing a bit, keeping the ambitions of even the most highly produced moments from overreaching. They do their own version of "Never My Love," in a somewhat lower-key manner than the Association. My fave here is "She's Just Laughing at Me," probably not coincidentally the only other song with a '60s copyright date. It's a gorgeous piece of Bee Gees-like orchestrated balladry. Most of the other cuts are quite good as well.

Backed by an entirely different crop of Nashville cats are Mike Hudson and Bob Farnsworth. I don't know much about who these guys were or where they came from, but they managed to put together a pretty nice harmony/soft-pop album in 1975, when such things were increasingly rare. It's a nice blend of folk-rock and pop that sounds heavily influenced by '60s UK acts. The boys sing, write the songs, and play piano and acoustic guitars, and they're backed up by a bunch of hot-shit players who've recorded with just about every country singer you could think of. Most notably, there's superstar country fiddler Buddy Spicher and guitarist Jerry Shook (to look up his CV is to be impressed). Nevertheless, there's nary a single trace of country influence to be found here. Hudson and Farnsworth get a little too cutesy at times (see "Peter Piper"), but it just contributes to the British twee '60s pop feel that mingles well with their '70s sound. Kudos to Randy Goodrum for contributing some nice synthesizer moments that function in an agreeable, Abbey Road kind of way. A couple of songs here betray a Christian lyrical bent, which explains why Mike Hudson went on to be a gospel/Contemporary Christian songwriter, but it doesn't intrude to much on this friendly, quirky record. Oh, I forgot to mention that it's a "concept" album representing "the progression of our lives from night into day." Whatever you say, guys.


*there's no search capability on this blog, but you can try a google search for "record geek" and "Mr. & Mrs. Garvey."

West - Bridges (Epic, 1969)

An interesting little record by this West coast group. Their first album, which I haven't heard, is occupied by a lot of covers (Fred Neil, Ian & Sylvia, other folk-rockers of the day), but this one is all originals. The first song on each side is sort of soul-inflected rock-pop a la the Boxtops or Rascals, but these are anomalies. The rest of side one is full of light folk-rock/country-rock in a Byrds vein. The second side has two soft, evocative instrumentals and a few striking psych-tinged soft-pop tunes so fragile, hushed, and delicate that they sound like Garfunkel & Garfunkel (in a good way). These tunes represent the original version of the kind of sound contemporary bands like the Clientele are after. Bob Johnston (Dylan, Leonard Cohen, et al) is the producer, and his organic, let-it-simmer-in-its-own-juices approach is apparent in the endearingly lo-fi sound on many of the cuts. One of the band members is Mike Stewart, of the '60s folk vocal group the We Five (and brother of Kingston Trio member/solo artist John Stewart), another is guitarist Ron Cornelius, apparently a session fave of Johnston's, who appeared on several Dylan and Cohen albums, among others. Curiously, a number of these guys appear as sidemen on the mid-'70s solo debut of Carol Grimes, former vocalist for prog-rockers Delivery.