UNDER THE TREE

Shide & Acorn's only proper studio album is nothing to get too excited about. In fact, the band's entire output consisting of one studio release and two compilations of early material, demos and outtakes (released long after they disbanded) never made all that much of an impression on the acid/prog folk community. The band has managed to achieve something of a semi-legendary status thanks to their inclusion in a handful of various-artist collections over the years, but in my opinion that is for the most part undeserved. They were one of a glut of folk-rock bands that proliferated in the wake of the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention's popularity in the late sixties, and by the time the band managed to put together their first studio album the wave was already passing. That combined with the almost complete lack of publicity for this minor-label, limited release all but ensured it would sink like a stone and be lost to history.

Not to say this is a bad album; in fact, as mellow contemporary folk with very mild acid tendencies this is fairly decent music. The short opening blues instrumental is misleading as none of the rest of the album sounds anything like it, but given the loose fusion of sounds coming out of the folk resurgence at the time and the lack of rigid adherence to defined genre stereotypes I suppose it is not all that out of place here.

Most of the rest of the album consists of a combination of mildly-rock tinged traditional- sounding British tunes and ISB-inspired acid folk. The former is well-represented in songs like the airy "Eleanor's Song", "Away, Fly Away Love", "Solitaire" and the title track. The latter influence comes across on the electric and spacey "Trucking" with its layered strings and vocals dripping with the pungent odors of patchouli and pot, along with "So Long Day" which plods along with acoustic harmonics and male/female vocal tracks that sound as if they were lifted directly from a Licorice McKechnie/Robin Williamson duet.

The most memorable tune, relatively speaking, is the flute and piano-dominated "Marigold" with its slightly off-kilter tempo and acid-tinged mellow electric guitar soloing. The song doesn't stand up well over time, but would have been quite appropriately placed when it was recorded in folk-drenched Britain around the beginning of the seventies.

In all this is a pleasant album, but one that adds nothing to the progression of folk music of its day. I'd place it at just inside of three out of five stars, with a mild recommendation for serious students of progressive and acid folk.

peace