After hearing his Immediate single (Dylan-esque folk rock), first CBS album (trad folk) and his £20 rated single with the Summer Sons (twisted sitar psych) I wasn’t too sure what to expect when I purchased a knackered copy of this LP a few years back for a “mere” fourteen quid. Hence my delight on finding it combined all three genres (with added Moog). Softley, owner of one of the loudest voices on record (check the distortion on any CD transfer of his Immediate record), hit the UK folk scene in the 60’s (writing “The War Drags On” as covered by Donovan among others) but by the time of this LP he was living in a van on a bit of waste ground in St Albans (as depicted on the front cover). It’s a gatefold with some of the lyrics reproduced and pertinent photos (surprise, a sunrise!). His backing band consists of virtually the same players as on Mick Greenwood’s first three albums — maybe they had a thing about hairy dudes called Mick.

The album kicks off with a Richard Thompson-type rocker (“Can You Hear Me Now”) before slipping into the double-mellow “Waterfall” and “Eagle”, along with another CBS act of this era, Trees, the very definition of acid folk to my ears. “Julie Argoyne” is a piece of whimsy to rank along with Van der Graaf’s “Aerosol Grey Machine” until the oddly affecting coda. Then onto “Caravan”, a stop-start acoustic number, stop-start enough for me to think the record was skipping in fact. I found this songs genuinely moving but if your taste in lyrics runs more to the “it is only a garden made of sandwich”* school then it may trip your sentiment detector. I could happily delete “If You’re Not Part Of The Solution, You Must Be Part Of The Problem” from the album but the side is tailed by “Ship” a spacey Moog-bearing trance out of the first order. The lyrics to this are printed on the gatefold but I won’t bother quoting them here as they make little sense when unsung.

Side two begins with “You Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine”, another rockin tune (maybe he felt he had to get them out of the way) with some deliciously wonky lead guitar, like a picked version “Waving My Arms in the Air” on Barrett minus the wah wah. After the homespun folksy twittering of “Birdy Birdy” lies “Time Machine”, a kind of folkier faintly Moog‑y version of “In the year 2525” and probably the best known track off this release, with Softley sounding like the “space tripper” of the lyrics. Demonstrating their good taste the Dutch had this as a single A side with a hirsute Mick doing his best gonk impression on the cover. I think there was a version of this with Mac Macleod (as Soft Cloud) on a Ptolomeic Terrascope cover CD a while back — if anyone’s got that, wouldn’t say no to copy as it’s OOP.

“On the Road Again” is a solo acoustic number, difficult to describe — maybe you’ll have to take my word for it (cough) before the album’s climax, “Love Colours”, an endless sitar and chant trance out that keeps pausing only to lurch off at an even more disturbing tangent every time. Maybe the best cut on the whole thing, definitely the best for annoying your neighbours with.

I have some of Mick Softley’s later albums but I would hesitate to recommend them here, they’re much more straight up folk-rockin’ with less of the psych influence. They also go for an extortionate £50 or so each but what can you do when you’re addicted…

* I do like Faust but I suspect their lyrics could be generated by putting traditional cockney knees up tunes through AltaVista translation a few times.