*OUT NOW* VA – Gather In The Mushrooms – Ace UK 2LP

Compiled by Bob Stanley to document the acid folk scene, “Gather In The Mushrooms” was first issued in 2004 on Sanctuary as a CD-only release; it proved popular enough for a sequel entitled “Early Morning Hush” two years later.

This new edition of “Gather In The Mushrooms” contains the cream of both long-deleted compilations with a few additions – COB, Roy Harper, Fotheringay – that weren’t available to Sanctuary at the time. Though they aren’t traditional, these songs have an authenticity of their own, an autumnal atmosphere and a naivety which proved influential in the 00s neo-folk boom (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Alasdair Roberts, Tunng et al) but impossible to replicate. For many of these acts at the end of the 60s, folk music and the hippy world that surrounded them was a way of life, a way of opting out from the Vietnam war, Angry Brigade and three-day-week early 70s. Anne Briggs lived in a caravan in Suffolk, Shelagh McDonald lived in a tent, Vashti Bunyan eschewed electricity; they weren’t part-timers. Listening to “Gather In The Mushrooms”, we are transported to a time when no one used the term post-modernist.

It may not have resonated with dyed-in-the wool political folkies, but over five decades later this music sounds very evocative of an England of yore – not necessarily one of poachers and pedlars, but one of long-haired youths in tie-dye T-shirts, bikers and hippies, acoustic guitars played in white stone cottages. Groups like Stone Angel (Bonus Track), Midwinter and Oberon made primitive, privately recorded folk albums; today they sound as distant and mystical as the field recordings of Alan Lomax. The sincerity and folk knowledge of a group like Forest becomes irrelevant once you hear something as eerie and evocative as ‘Graveyard’. Home-made, homely, warm as soup or chilling as a hoar frost, this is music of innocence and rare beauty.

tracklist:
A01 Corn Rigs – Magnet & Paul Giovanni
A02 Morning Way – Trader Horne
A03 Nottanum Town – Oberon
A04 Graveyard – Forest
A05 The Skater – Midwinter
B01 Winter Winds – Fotheringay
B02 Lord And Master – Heron
B03 Fly High – Bridget St John
B04 Sheep Season – Mellow Candle
B05 The Bells Of Dunwich – Stone Angel

C01 The Seagulls Scream – Christine Quayle
C02 Forest And The Shore – Keith Christmas
C03 Rosemary Hill – Fresh Maggots
C04 Fine Horseman – Anne Briggs
C05 The Werewolf – Barry Dransfield
D01 Another Day – Roy Harper
D02 Window Over The Bay – Vashti Bunyan
D03 Eleven Willows – COB (Clive’s Original Band)
D04 The Herald – Comus