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The Incredible String Band - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter CD (album) cover

THE HANGMAN'S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER

The Incredible String Band

 

Prog Folk

3.31 | 69 ratings

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Ivan_Melgar_M
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
2 stars This is an album I haven't heard for at least 20 years until yesterday, but due to a post in which THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND was described as great, went to the "Arc of the lost records" (a box where I keep the albums I never listen), found the LP and placed if on the old turntable....Immediately remembered why it was in the forgotten disks box, because in my opinion is boring, unimaginative and full of depressive flat vocals.

Even when the Medieval and Celtic influence (and some music that reminds me of the soundtrack from the "George Clooney" movie "O Brother Where Art Thou?"), place this band in the Folk realm, that's all I can say. because I sincerely don't know if it's a Prog Folk album.

Of course it has a lot of late 60's elements (which band didn't in 1968?), but I believe it's a failed attempt to fusion Folk and Psychedelia, because they are never really experimental. A few weird noises and percussion plus some sitar ands a Beatlesque touch is not enough to make an album Psychedelic....Much less a Prog one.

I won't even attempt to review every song, because all the albums sounds as an endless 50 minutes repetitive and boring track.

Except for a few good soft piano passages in "The Minotaur's Song" and the beautiful "Witches Hat" with some nice melancholic organ passages, the album is tedious, boring, dissonant (not in a good sense) and absolutely predictable, I honestly don't know if this guys are really good musicians, because the instruments are left as background for the vocals, which by the way are terrible (Who told this guys they had to sing?....Seems they were not able to keep a tune even if their life was in risk).

I ignore how legendary or popular THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND was when this album was released (I was four years old), all I know is that when I heard it in the early 80's was already dated but today can only be described as absolutely anachronic.

So will give the band the benefit of the doubt and rate "The Hangman's Daughter" with two stars instead of the 1 lonely star I was tempted, at least until I find and listen The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion that must be gathering moth somewhere in the closet, and discover what they pretended.

Ivan_Melgar_M | 2/5 |

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