The fourth entry in the series, and Hugo Simões tries his hand at the top 10.
That word “best“. It’s the easiest way to send a writer running into the woods, raving, clawing at the maples. It’s the kind of pressure that requires either deep meditation or impulse. I’m going with impulse. It starts more conversations. So on to this top 10. For my money, Americana is its own complicated word. And once you latch UK onto it, I start thinking things I maybe shouldn’t. After all, just how much music has been coming out of the UK without a shred of American influence over the past 60 years? Well, this list tries to go for somewhat blatant cases, veering closer to acoustic balladry than it does to blues. But there’s an inescapable foreignness. A desirable one, I’d say. For an extra bit of variety, I’ll go fully into some so-far-untouched clichés in the feature. So here we go:
10. Graham Nash Songs for Beginners (1970)
Still knee-deep in the glory of CSN and CSNY, this ex-Hollies member set down to write and record a number of his own songs. Mostly a collection of piano ballads, ranging from lovelorn diatribes to anti-war screeds. Nash pairs his youthful, delicate delivery with both pared-down arrangements (e.g., Simple Man) and power-ballad stylings, such as in There’s Only One and Chicago. There might be a little too much naivety at work, but we’re in an age where naivety can be refreshing.
“We can change the world/Rearrange the world/If you believe in justice/If you believe in freedom“.
9. Iain Matthews If You Saw Thro My Eyes (1971)
As the band began to slowly edge towards another direction with Unhalfbricking, this former Fairport Convention collaborator struck out on his own. In 1971, this release came out, featuring collaborations with Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny. Mostly original compositions, but also featuring a cover of Mimi & Richard Fariña’s Reno Nevada. The songs are strong and somewhat varied, veering from folk rock to power ballads and Donovanesque whimsy. Here’s Never Ending, with a little bit of baroque pop in there:
8. Brinsley Schwarz Despite it All (1971)
Nick Lowe before the Nick Lowe fame, and before Cruel to Be Kind became a song that unaccountably makes me shiver. This outfit, named after guitarist Brinsley Schwarz, produced a slew of albums in the 70s, all very competent country-folk-rock. The kind of thing you’d expect some longhaired cowboys to play in a 1970s revisionist western. Country Girlis a romper of a folk-rock opening track, going into the excellent The Slow One. Think UK The Band, or The Flying Burrito Brothers. A bit of a toss-up between this one and 1972’s Silver Pistol.
And an overlooked release, supposedly due to stories involving unexpectedly late light aircraft and projectile vomit. A loss for the band, and a loss for the world.
7. Sandy Denny The North Star Grassman and the Ravens (1971)
Another member of Fairport Convention working on her own solo material. Folk balladry with an English sensibility, yes, but always flourishes of country, and blatant honky-tonk with Down in the Flood and hints of it in Crazy Lady Blues. We’re once removed from the core of Americana here, but think of the term as a core with blurry edges: The North Star Grassman isn’t quite dead centre; it’s veering off somewhere else. And what’s not to like about that? Highlights include opening track Late November and John the Gun, which Denny had already recorded with the short-lived Fotheringay.
6. Bert Jansch LA Turnaround (1974)
Jansch was certainly no stranger to the blues at this point. But in this album, produced by The Monkees’ Michael Nesmith in California, he ventures into a mixture of his bluesy folk style with extra California country overtones. That’s Red Rhodes, known for his work with James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, and beyond, on a very ethereal pedal steel. Travelling Man is exactly an example of what could easily be a country song, save for the trad guitar throughout. Fresh As A Sweet Sunday Morning, One for Jo, There Comes a Time,and the rerecording of Needle of Death are all highlights to look out for.
5. Elvis Costello My Aim is True (1977)
You can’t quite easily deny that this 1950s-loving Buddy Holly lookalike was working with a distinctly American sensibility, which he managed to kick off into his own brand of rock. Backed by California country-rock band Clover, this is the album that gave us songs like Alison, Less Than Zero, Red Shoes, and Welcome to the Working Week. Throw in punk, rock and roll, what have you, but don’t tell me this isn’t quite Americana. It just swaps the denim shirt for the dowdy spectacles, the rockin’ grandma from yesteryear. How could you omit anything from this list that features the devastating line “I heard you let that little friend of mine/take off your party dress“?
4. Van Morrison Tupelo Honey (1971)
Conceived as a country music album at a time when Morrison was living in domestic bliss in Woodstock, in upstate New York, this release has earned comparisons to the work of The Band, but it’s nevertheless as distinctly Van Morrison as ever. Old, Old Woodstockexpounds on these feelings of homecoming, causing critics to compare the album to an Odyssey of sorts, a return to the place where that sweet ambrosia, honey from the Tupelo trees, flows like water. Somewhat forgotten in the digital age (good luck streaming it), but it’s worth remembering, partly for that very reason. Is the eponymous track Tupelo HoneyessentiallyCrazy Love? Well, yes. But cast your ears towardsStarting A New Lifeinstead, if that bothers you. Or the infectious Wild Night. And how to resist You’re My Woman? Watch him get away with lyrics like“You’remy woman/You bore my child, Lord“.
3. Richard & Linda Thompson I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight (1974)
The first album by Richard & Linda Thompson was virtually ignored when first released, but has steadily accrued critical praise over the years. The songs have been described as “thoroughly English in their mood and responsibility”. I wouldn’t dispute that, but when Linda Thompson takes over, especially on Withered and Diedand Down Where the Drunkards Roll, there’s a certain Karen Dalton circa 1971 feeling that takes over. In fact, it’s there throughout, in arrangements featuring dulcimers, and that faithful pedal steel. If I have to justify things by using the words “pedal steel” again, I might blow a gasket, but every cliché has a truth behind it. So is there something very English about this one? Yes, but very clearly not just.
2. Fairport Convention Unhalfbricking (1969)
The album that properly kicked things off for the band, but was also the beginning of the end. A mixture of traditional Americana with British folk sensibilities, Sandy Denny’s songwriting straddling the two, as in classics Autopsy and Who Knows Where the Time Goes. The urge to escape a clear emulation of West Coast Country-Folk-Rock brings the band closer to something else. But the intersections are there, and they’re worth cherishing. The hints of psychedelia, for one. It is hard to listen to opening track, Genesis Hall, without thinking of Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit, to be exact. And here come the roots, with Cajun Woman Blues, and Bob Dylan covers Percy’s Song, Million Dollar Bash, and the unaccountably French version of If You Gotta Go, Go.
1. Van Morrison Astral Weeks (1968)
How to begin? It’s unintended provocation. Maybe enough has been said about this one. Once Lester Bangs has been let loose all over an album, there’s probably not much to add, even about 50 years later. And on Van Morrison in general, well, we’re arguably at capacity when it comes to odes to the sun. Then again, Robert Christgau called this little number “unlistenably obscure”. So maybe there’s still something worth chewing on.
Yes, Astral Weeks has been discussed for decades. And throughout that time it suffered a number of qualifiers: Celtic Folk, Blue-Eyed Soul, mystical-whatsit, Folk Jazz. It’s down to Van Morrison’s influences: a Belfast kid brought up on Lead Belly, Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson. Then a teenagehood spent poring over Soul and R&B. A muted rock ‘n’ roll influence coming in through the likes of Gene Vincent. But also, yes, Hank Williams. A hodgepodge of influences that certainly fit within the realm of that elusive term, Americana. The rub comes about due to another influence at heart, one that particularly stands out in Astral Weeks: Irish literature. Yeats, Joyce, Donleavy. Irish stream of consciousness, its landscapes, connotations. Yeats might indeed be the main culprit of all this bandying about of the word mystical, spiritual, in re Van Morrison. Then again, the word “Astral” doesn’t help, nor the Celtic font, the superimposed greenery.
Well.
Arguably, this takes the whole thing far and away from the distinctly American roots of most of Morrison’s influences. There is indeed nothing especially Rust-Belt, or pappy’s truck americana about Astral Weeks. It belongs to no particular genre: the mixture of acoustic guitar with trumpet, with strings, with Van Morrison’s strident, at times froggy, northern Irish brogue. It does not evoke the desert, the heartland, the hidden, browbeaten corners of America. I wouldn’t call it American. I wouldn’t call it Irish, Northern Irish, or British. I wouldn’t call it anything, but if we have to take our gloves off and get down to manhandling qualifiers, I don’t suppose I’d mind calling it a meeting of influences that you might group under UK Americana.
And if that’s what it is, it’s surely up high in the canon. An album of songs built on repetition that builds and builds and builds until it fades, carrying that faint hint of eternity: “so far away/way up into heaven“. Lester Bangs and others have seen these songs as coming from someone in the throes of unimaginable pain. What I hear is a joy: a pleasure, and a salve of sorts depending on your own little idiosyncrasies, yes, but.
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