SWADDLING SONGS

Another one shot band that unfortunalty didn´t stay around long enough to fulfill their obvious grand potential. This time is an irish outfiit that came out under the name of Mellow Candle. Their only CD, Swadling Songs, was quite strong and had some very good tracks, with agfood musicanship and nice female voals that reminds me of the pastoral side of Renaissance and other prog folk bands of the time like Fairport Convention. David Williams provided some very nice guitar lines and Alison Williams had an excellent voice. I believe they influenced a whole generation fo irish bands that followed in the next decade, like Clannad.

Most of the tracks are very well crafted and recorded, the band had a very tight rhythm section .Clodagh Simonds beautiful harmony vocals and her very effective keyboard playing are one the bands best features. Their sound is a very good mix orf prog rock and folk and i think they were a bit ahead of their time. I can´t find no other explanation why this record failed to make a bigger impact on the folk-rock scene (maybe fueled by bad manangement and/or internal squabbles, I really don´t know). Anyway, at least they left this little gem here for posterity. All tracks are good and varied, helped by their tasteful arrangement and excellent musicanship.

If you´re into prog folk, or good melodic music in general you should not miss this one. An excelent assition to any prog music collectio. Rating: four strong stars.