This 12-strong collection of songs dusted with eldritch magic has languished in the dungeons of folk music ever since its release in 1972, the victim of a bankrupt label and neglect. But the potency and influence of Bright Phoebus have mushroomed in inverse proportion to its availability, and more than 40 years since it was simultaneously rejected by the worlds of folk and rock for being neither one thing nor the other, Bright Phoebus is routinely lauded as a masterpiece.
Understandably so. The twin guitar work of Martin Carthy and Richard Thompson and unfussy production of Bill Leader allow the compositional otherness and strident singing of Lal Waterson to cast the longest shadow here, with at least two of her unearthly and instantly beguiling songs – the nuclear war fever dream Never the Same and the elegiac Fine Horseman – unsurpassed in scope and depth. Equally, the one-take Child Among the Weeds, written for the stillborn twin sister of Lal’s son Oliver, is beyond mesmerising. That said, the album’s high point arguably is her brother’s lament The Scarecrow, an eerie reverie of the elements, child sacrifice and growing corn.
In an age of music as product, Bright Phoebus is as incongruous now as it was upon its release. All the more reason to love it.
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