Matthews' Southern Comfort / Second Spring

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As with most of Ian Matthews’ post-Fairport Convention albums, he preferred to record the songs of others to his own material, though 1969’s <i>Second Spring</i> boasted four Matthews originals, starting with “Ballad of Obray Ramsey,” a fast-paced folk-rocker fueled by a barn-burning banjo and a bluegrass based shuffle that ran perpendicular to a vocal delivery still steeped in vestiges of the jaunty British folk synonymous with his former band. But armed with fellow Americana music enthusiasts like Gordon Huntley on the pedal steel, Spooky Tooth’s Marc Griffiths and Marmalade’s Roger Swallow, songs like “Jinkson Johnson” (another Matthews original) played with twangy authenticity, though some of the fiddle parts still resonate with the melodies and tones of Brit-folk, making for a wonderful contrast of hillbilly-meets-druid exaggerations. On the a cappella “Blood Red Roses,” where Matthews opens with just his voice inflecting like a timeless chantey before gossamer layers of heavenly honeyed harmonies descend. In typical Matthews style, his sunny canyon-country take on James Taylor’s “Something In the Way She Moves” upstages the original.

via Apple Music