Uncertain Saddle
This is a 1973 album that never got a release until now and
one can understand the oddities that prevented its support at the time, not
that there weren’t more obvious examples of eccentric music then – experimental
and psychedelic – but this was recorded in Nashville, and it would seem the
cowboys at large were not comfortable in its saddle.
No such problem today, though it has its inconsistencies. A
track like See Ya Around is typically
idiosyncratic, the closer on the album and only 1.22 long, and its jazz-like acoustic
guitar rhythm and directionless lyric wouldn’t win in a hit parade, whereas Clair Oh Clair is a beautiful folk
melody, sweetly played on acoustic guitar with George Martin-esque strings
accompanying, and it highlights Gantry’s fine vocal.
The two opening tracks Away
Away and Different are strong
songs, the first with some funky organ and other electronic effects fitting the
early 70s well – indeed it is a complex but clever song, yet again not ‘classic’
Nashville – and the second is a gorgeous melody with sweet pop orchestration of
the time that one could imagine being very popular – the vocal perhaps veering
to the unexpected, and it reminds of Tim Buckley at his more adventurous.
Then there is third track Tear which is a spoken word/poetry – with sitar – song, and it is
peculiar, musically and lyrically, not mainstream, and not Country in the way
Johnny Cash who covered one of Gantry’s songs was. There is another spoken word
song Hatred for Feeny and this too
would have alienated an audience with other expectations from an artist who
wrote the hit song Dreams of the Everyday
Housewife for Glenn Campbell.
So this mixture could still be difficult for listeners
today, especially if the more melodic and pop-orchestrated numbers are the
singularly desired. But for a beauty like Clair
Oh Clair, it is worth the saddle slipping now and again.
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