Some people must be impervious to the emotive allure of Sandy Denny’s voice – it’s just that we’ve yet to meet them. The much-missed soul of Fairport Convention and Fotheringay sang with an unadorned purity which cleaves the heart and encourages contemplation in even the most insensate of humanoids.
That gift of a voice was matched with an intuitive songwriting ability that also cuts to the emotional chase. The North Star Grassman And The Ravens, from 1971, includes several compositions that rank alongside Denny’s quicksilver best. The perfectly weighted Late November twinkles with Jerry Donahue’s sylvan guitar licks, while The Sea Captain is an elegiac addition to Denny’s elemental canon. The supremely affecting Next Time Around comes wrapped in a Harry Robinson string arrangement of shimmering subtlety, while the stoical dignity of the title track must have had The Band gnawing their beards off with envy.
An endearing duet with Richard Thompson on Dylan’s Down In The Flood is so ragged-arsed that it may as well have sat on a Catherine wheel, while a cover of Let’s Jump The Broomstick indicates that Denny’s voice was oddly unsuited to anything less than big, oceanic and timeless issues. Bonus tracks include a clutch of demos and BBC outings.
